Still A Bit Impossible
by AllisonChance
Summary: Entering the Doctor's time stream has unintended consequences for Clara. She's beginning to remember lives she's never lived, run into people she's never met and on top of it all, she's getting migraines. And why does River Song keep turning up with cryptic comments and non-answers?
1. Chapter 1

A/N: I will be cross posting this story under the same username and title at Archive Of Our Own.

After Trenzalore I wanted a normal day. I felt weary, as if I were a watercolor left out during a torrential rain storm.

I don't remember leaving the Doctor's time stream.

I don't remember going back to the TARDIS.

I do remember sitting in the control room and Jenny offering me a cup of tea while Madame Vastra badgered the Doctor and Strax demanded to know about the TARDIS' weapon capabilities.

"...that's what I think, anyway," said Jenny when I took the cup.

I didn't ask her what she had been saying. It didn't seem important. Everything seemed very distant and muffled.

Shadows of memories danced at the peripheries of my mind like snatches of movement out of the corner of my eye. If I could just make myself focus I thought I'd be able to capture them, but they flitted away.

I lifted the cup to my lips but forgot to take a sip.

Then the Doctor and Madame Vastra were hovering in front of me and Jenny wringing her hands behind them. The Doctor had his screwdriver out and was scanning me.

"Oi," I said, batting the screwdriver away, "Watch who you're pointing that thing at."

The Doctor grinned and chuckled. "Good as new, eh, Clara?"

"I think she needs to see a doctor, a proper medical doctor," said Madame Vastra. "Who knows what damage could have been done in the time stream."

"I'm fine," I said. I handed the cup of tea to her and stood up. "Just tired. Those dream teleconferences don't do much for getting a good night's sleep. And, apparently, I was still half dreaming part of the time anyway."

I met the Doctor's eye and he knew that I was referring to River. The others looked confused.

"Well," said the Doctor, clapping me on the back, "What say we get you home and you can have a good night's sleep?"

I made some comment that made him laugh (I don't remember what I said) and then the Doctor dashed around the console and set the TARDIS into flight.

He didn't actually take us home.

He took us to London, 1893.

Jenny put new sheets on the bed in the guest room while Strax and Madame Vastra refreshed the perimeter defenses. The Doctor disappeared. Later I learned that he went to find my parents. Or, rather, the parents of the me that was born in Victorian London. He had some questions for them.

I turned down dinner and went straight to bed. It was funny climbing into that bed; it felt like going to sleep in a museum. I'd never gone to sleep in another time. That had always seemed like a line I shouldn't cross. Stay over night and _sleep_ and somehow my adventure with the Doctor wouldn't be fun days out. They'd change, become something more permanent.

Of course, I'd just lived a thousand million lives to save him. I suppose I'd already crossed the line from day tripper into something more.

Once I got under the blankets I had to get out again to turn out the gas light. I dashed back across the floor and nearly stumbled over the rug. I made it to the bed though.

Funny how I could face down death in a Cold War submarine and those horrible silver Cybermen but the dark made my heart hammer in my chest. I've always been afraid of the dark. One of those irrational fears, I suppose (though with the Doctor, irrational fears sometimes turn out to be very rational indeed).

I lay there in the dark—and it was very dark. Jenny had drawn the curtains before she left and not a smidgen of light shone through the slit where they met. The house was full of strange sounds. Above me the floor boards creaked. I heard Strax down below, marching. I curled up so that my back was to the wall and pulled the covers up over my head.

"Silly, Clara," I whispered.

I nearly peed myself when a hand rested on my shoulder.

I whipped the covers back and shot up, pillow in hand, ready to attack.

"Sweetie, the pillow is not the best choice of weapon," said River Song.

She was sitting on the edge of the bed dressed in that ridiculous dress that looked like a corn husk and holding a spherical lamp. The soft warm light cast by the lamp bathed her and made her profusion of curls seem like a golden shimmer.

Her observation about the pillow (which I still clutched, ready to strike) was accurate, but I did not drop it.

"You," I said brandishing the pillow at her, "Are dead. You're the Doctor's dead wife. Why are you haunting me?"

"Spoilers," she said with a smug smile. She reached past me and set the light at the head of the bed.

Her smile was infuriating so I hit her with the pillow. "Does the Doctor know that you're haunting me?"

"As you fall asleep the light will dim. While you're awake it will shine brightly. There's nothing to be afraid of here. Don't worry."

"You didn't answer my question," I said.

"Clever girl," she said. She stood up and smoothed her dress. "Would you like me to stay until you fall asleep?"

"You are not my mum," I said. Thoughts of my mother, Ellie Oswald, bubbled up from deep within me. Memories that I smothered to keep my grief at bay. I threw the pillow at her, hitting her squarely in the stomach.

River didn't say anything. She bent over and picked up the pillow, fluffed it and handed it back to me.

She left through the door (that should have been a dead give away right there, mind you) and closed it behind her.

I put the pillow back down on the bed beside the light. I lay down and watched the light.

It grew steadily dimmer and then it was morning.


	2. Chapter 2

When I woke up, the Doctor hadn't returned.

The lamp was still there (Were dream items supposed to last so long or feel so real? I wondered). It was the strangest looking thing. It was the size and weight of one of those jumbo bouncy balls that Artie and his friends sometimes played with, but it was as smooth and clear as glass. I couldn't see anything inside of it that would make it light up.

I stuffed it inside the pillowcase before leaving the room to find the others.

Jenny loaned me a dress (black) which fit rather well and Madame Vastra provided me with a toothbrush and toothpaste which tasted like bark. Not that I've ever eaten bark. It tasted like what I _imagine_ bark would taste like.

We had breakfast in the conservatory and I was surprised to see Ada Gillyflower sitting at the table. She looked happier and healthier than the last time I had seen her and she was so pleased that I was there that she hugged me tightly and insisted that I sit next to her.

"Ada helps me run the house," said Jenny. "She's a right good cook as well."

Ada flushed and shook her head. "I do what I can."

I squeezed her hand and told her that I was so glad to see her again.

I was famished and tucked in while the others told Ada about the events of Trenzalore. I was well into my third helping of little tight rolls of crispy bacon, eggs, toast with jam and fried mushrooms when I realized that they were talking about River Song.

"Yes, but where did he get to?" Strax was saying. "I maintain that it was a trap. You can't trust a man who can vanish at will."

"For the last time, Strax," said Madame Vastra with what was a long suffering sigh if I'd ever head one, "River is not a man. She is a woman."

Strax sniffed with contempt.

"But he seemed to think that we couldn't see her," Jenny said.

"Wait," I said, setting down my slice of toast (spread with the most marvelous apricot marmalade I'd ever tasted), "You thought you could see River?"

"Thought we could see her? Of course we could see her," said Madame Vastra. She tossed her head and took a sip of her tea.

"Yeah," I said, "In the tea room. When we were all dreaming. You mean you could see her then."

"And at Trenzalore," said Jenny.

I froze, bit of mushroom on a fork half way to my mouth. I looked at the trio sitting at the table with me. River had been my dream. No one else had been able to see her. The Doctor certainly hadn't. He would have said something, I reasoned. Your dead wife pops up again, you say something.

I lay the fork down on the plate.

"But she was in my head," I said.

Jenny snorted. "She does that, doesn't she? Get in people's heads."

"I was the only one who could see her," I said. "She kept the psychic link open after I woke up."

"Well, if you were the only one who could see him," Strax said, "Then why was the Doctor sucking on his face?"

"They were kissing, Strax," said Madame Vastra. "He wasn't sucking on _her_ face. He was kissing her."

"Looked like sucking to me." Strax's tone was petulant.

I held up a hand, "Hold on, you're telling me that River was not in my head. She was really there? I mean, really there to the point that the Doctor could have himself a little snog? When was this?"

"While you were in his timestream," said Jenny.

"He stopped to _snog_ while I was _saving his life_?" I sputtered. Ungrateful man. I stop him from dying every day he's been alive and he gets frisky with the missus.

Jenny reached across the table and put her hand over mine. "To be fair, it had been a rather long while since they'd seen each other."

"But, she's dead. In some library or something." I thought about the strange little lamp stuffed inside my pillowcase in the bedroom upstairs. The little lamp that hadn't disappeared come morning. The dream lamp that was surprisingly real.

Before anyone could say anything more we heard the front door bang open.

Madame Vastra rolled her eyes. "That will be the Doctor."

"I'll get another plate," said Jenny, springing to her feet.

The Doctor swaggered into the conservatory and cried, "Ada!" with delight. He grabbed both of her hands and kissed them and then knelt down by her chair. "You lovely thing! How are you doing?"

"My monster," said Ada with a warm smile. "I'm doing quite well."

"Yes, I can see that! Vastra and Jenny taking good care of you, eh?"

Ada nodded and squeezed his hands. "It is so good to hear your voice again."

He grinned and kissed her cheek before jumping to his feet and exclaiming over the marmalade.

"Where have you been all night?" Madame Vastra asked.

"Out," was all the Doctor would say before launching into a story about a planet made of marmalade.

I leaned back into my chair and watched him. He was hiding something. When the Doctor is hiding something he tries to distract everyone with silly antics, outrageous stories or thrilling adventures. While he babbled and ate a considerable amount of the marmalade I tried to figure out what, exactly, it was that he was hiding. He knew I was onto him, too. Every now and then he would catch my eye and squirm in his chair and then burst forth with more flailing and a shocking twist in his story.

I didn't say anything. I could wait him out.

I was good at waiting people out. I had to wait Angie out regularly when she got into one of her moods. I would just stand in front of her, arms crossed and stare at her. Give her my you-are-a-lying-liar-who-lies look. A little time, a little patience, and she would break. She always did.

The Doctor would, too.

At last Madame Vastra excused herself from the table to take care of some business and Jenny cleared away the dishes. Strax ambled off, muttering something about needing to find a good weapon for "young Thomas Thomas."

It was just me, the Doctor and Ada left at the table. His marmalade planet story trailed off.

Ada had hung onto the Doctor's every word. It was clear that she was half in love with him. It must happen often, I thought, when the Doctor saves a girl. She falls in love with him.

I wondered what happened when the girl saved the Doctor.

He had lapsed into silence, fiddling with a spoon between his fingers. He kept looked at me through that ridiculous floppy fringe of his.

The silence was suffocating.

Pushing her chair back, Ada stood. "Thank you for the lovely story," she said, reaching forward until her hand rested on the Doctor's shoulder. She patted it and then walked out of the room. The confidence with which she walked revealed that she was familiar with the house.

She must have lived there a while, I thought. I wondered where she had been when the Whisper Men attacked.

The Doctor continued to roll the spoon back and forth between his fingers.

I settled myself more comfortably in the chair, arms still crossed, still giving him the infamous Oswald stare-down.

He heaved a sigh and tossed the spoon down on the table. "I was talking to your parents."

"My parents?" I said.

"Clara Oswin Oswald's parents. The echo of you who once lived here."

"The me that died, you mean," I said. I could remember standing at the edge of a cliff that plunged down into mist and white and nothingness and the Doctor shouting that I was impossible. Memories of a time line that I ought to have forgotten.

"Yes," said the Doctor.

"So, what did you find out?" I kept my voice casual, a bit brisk.

He looked surprised by my question. Perhaps he had been expecting me to be confused or maybe offended. "Clara Oswin Oswald was a perfectly normal girl."

"I should hope so. Wouldn't want another me sprouting up with super powers," I said.

"No," he said, giving me an unreadable look, "No, we wouldn't want that."


	3. Chapter 3

Instead of taking me home, the Doctor decided to stay to take Ada on a walk through Regent's Park. Madame Vastra tactfully suggested that I look in the TARDIS wardrobe for something other than Jenny's dress to wear. The Doctor already looked period appropriate and he promised that he and Ada would wait while I found clothes.

I felt a little nervous about entering the TARDIS on my own. She really did not like me. When she wasn't locking me out or mocking me through her voice interface she was moving the toilet or hiding the kitchen. I stood in front of the closed doors and rested my hand on the wood. Like always it was slightly warm to the touch. It felt like wood that had been sitting out in the sun.

"Please be nice," I said.

The wardrobe was on the lower level of the console room, accessible by a flight of stairs just off the entrance.

"It wasn't always here." I didn't know where that thought had come from or why I felt so certain of it. I had a niggling sensation of deja vu at the back of my mind. I shook my head to clear my thoughts and opened one of the compartments.

The TARDIS could change in appearance almost like the Doctor, I thought as I pulled out a violet dress and frowned at it. It was supposed to change only under the direction of its pilot, but the Type 40 tended to change of its own volition. That was part of the reason it had been retired.

I froze and the dress slipped from my fingers.

How did I know all of that about the TARDIS? What was a Type 40 exactly? Did that mean that there were 39 other types of TARDIS out there, banging around in the universe.

Of course not, I thought. All of the other TARDISes were destroyed when Gallifrey burned.

"How do I know that?" I asked out loud. My mouth had gone dry and I felt my stomach drop. That nervous sensation you get right before you give a speech or ride a roller coaster.

I concentrated and tried to remember more, but it was like trying to snatch a handful of fog. It dissipated the moment I tried to capture it.

Huffing with frustration I waded the violet dress into a ball and stuffed it back into the compartment. The next dress I pulled out was a pretty gray and navy blue thing. It wasn't my favorite color (which is red), but it was good enough. I looked around and thought about trying to find somewhere else to change, and then shrugged. With my luck the TARDIS had probably put the nearest room seven miles away. Either that or I'd open a door and find the only place to change was in the pool.

I stripped down and changed into the dress. I reached into the compartment one last time and pulled out a hat which matched my dress. The TARDIS must have decided that she liked me a teensy bit after all because the hat was trimmed with red ribbons.

I left my clothes bundled up in my satchel which was still sitting by the control panel. Shaking my finger at the TARDIS I admonished, "Don't move this. I want to find it again when I get back."

I swear that if she had eyes she would have rolled them at me.

The Doctor, Ada and Jenny were standing in the entry hall waiting for me. Ada was wearing a pale green dress and a hat with a veil which covered her face and eyes. The Doctor was trying (unsuccessfully) to close a matching green and pink parasol which he had opened. Jenny stood back, arms crossed, watching with clear amusement on her face.

"Ah! Clara, there you are!" The Doctor waved the parasol at me.

"It's bad luck to open an umbrella indoors," I said.

"Yes, well, this isn't an umbrella and I am impervious to bad luck."

Jenny snorted, then took the parasol from his hands and closed it. She handed it to Ada and gestured towards the door, "Shall we?"

The park was scarcely more than a block away from the house and we entered it near the Boating Lake. I was surprised by how similar it looked to the modern version I was familiar with. Less joggers and tourists and no lorries or car, but the landscaping seemed unchanged.

The Doctor and Ada led the way. He had found a walking stick somewhere and was using it to point out the sights to Ada—which was rather obtuse of him considering she was blind. Jenny and I followed a few meters behind.

"We won't be molested, Miss. We look just like a respectable woman and her maid out for a walk," Jenny assured me.

I hadn't known that molestation was a risk and so I started thinking of all of the ways I could use my hat pin as a weapon. It's what traveling with the Doctor does to you. Turns you into the sort of person who thinks about stabbing strangers in the neck with a hat pin while out on a walk on a beautiful afternoon.

(I wasn't planning on just stabbing any stranger, mind. Just the ones that threatened me first).

As we rounded a corner I saw two children sitting together on a bench. A girl and a boy. They were at once strangers, but also as familiar to me as Angie and Artie. I almost called out to them. I felt their names on the tip of my tongue but when I tried to remember what their names were, I couldn't.

"Clara? Clara what's wrong?" asked Jenny. Then she saw the children. "Oh, no," she said. She grabbed my arm and dragged me behind a hedge.

I felt slightly dazed. The girl was named Francesca. She had nightmares. The little boy was Digby. I knew that now. How could I have forgotten their names? I tried to remember more, but couldn't.

"This was a bad idea," Jenny said as she pushed me down and knelt beside me.

We were well hidden. The hedge was tall and broad. No matter from which direction someone on the foot path approached us, we would be out of sight—unless you knew where to look for us.

The children did.

"Miss Montague?" Digby called.

"You couldn't have seen her," said Francesca.

"I did, I swear I did," said the boy. The voices were drawing nearer.

"But she's dead. We saw her die at Christmas."

"She's not dead, she's not," said the boy and then he crashed through the hedge and tumbled over on top of us.

"Miss Montague!" he cried, and threw his arms around me.

The girl appeared and she gasped and then grinned with delight. "You really aren't dead!" Then she nearly fell upon me with a hug.

"I need to get the Doctor," Jenny said, scrambling to her feet.

I stood as best I could with the two children clinging to me. Francesca had begun to cry and Digby was holding onto my skirt so tightly I could hardly find my balance.

"Father will be ever so glad to see that you're alive," Digby said. "He loves you. He was so awfully sad when you died."

Francesca nodded, grabbing my hand and kissing it. "He was, oh it was terrible! Now that you're alive, he'll want to marry you!"

"Marry me?" I had no idea who these children were, much less how I recognized them or knew their names. The last thing that I wanted to deal with was their father's romantic attentions.

"Oh yes," said Digby, loosening his grip on my skirt enough to look up at me. "Say you'll marry him, Miss Montague. Then you'll be our mother."

Thank goodness I was spared from answering by the appearance of the Doctor. He greeted the children by name and remarked on how much they had grown. For all of his joviality, I caught him casting concerned glances in my direction. While the children told him about all they had been doing since Christmas, Francesca kept a tight hold of my hand and Dibgy let go of my skirt only to grab my other hand.

"I can see that you've missed Miss Montague," the Doctor said.

"We've been very unhappy without her," said Digby.

"Yes we have," said Francesca, "But it will be better now that she's alive."

"Yes! She can come back to live with us and stay with us forever. Even after we're grown up," said Digby.

"Hold on," I said. "I can't stay with you. I can't be your..." I was going to say "nanny" but I realized that Victorian children probably didn't have nannies. What would they have had then? I tried to remember what I'd read in Dickens in Year Nine. "I can't be your governess."

"Of course you can, Miss Montague!" cried Francesca.

"Miss Montague, Miss Montague," Digby tugged my hand. "Please do your voice, Miss Montague!" He leaned close and whispered, "Your secret voice."

I had no idea what they meant by secret voices. I'd never done a secret voice for Angie and Artie and neither of them would have asked me. I looked and the Doctor and silently pleaded with him to help me, but he was wringing his hands and looking around clearly as confused as I felt.

"Which secret voice, then?" I asked. I'd learned that sometimes, with the right prompting, a child would reveal exactly what I needed to know. "I think I might have forgotten it. Do you remember how it goes?"

Digby beamed at me and started speaking in (a rather appalling version of) a stereotypical lower class Dickensian accent.

"'Allo, mates," I said which was apparently exactly the right thing to say because both children looked incredibly pleased.

"Ah, right," said the Doctor. He glanced over his shoulder. "Children, say goodbye to Miss Montague, we really must be going now." He pried my hand free from Francesca's and pulled me away from them. He looked downright worried which was really rather unsettling.

And then I found out why he was worried.

"Good God. Miss Montague!"

I turned to find a man that I somehow knew was Captain Latimer—the children's father.


	4. Chapter 4

Captain Latimer stood stock still on the path, gaping at me. One hand clutched his walking stick, his other hand was trembling.

As soon as I saw his face I remembered what he looked like. Slim with dark hair and a beard. I remembered that he was reserved, shy. He didn't know how to interact with his children. He was nervous in their presence. They reminded him too much of his late wife. It felt like recognizing someone in a dream.

Digby darted away from my side and ran to his father. He grasped his father's hand and pulled him closer. "Father, it's Miss Montague, she didn't really die!"

I wished that I had demanded that the Doctor give me a full accounting of the me that had died in Victorian London. I wish I had him spell out every detail. I felt so wrong footed faced with this shocked man in front of me. I knew him, but I didn't.

The Doctor was dancing from one foot to the other, twisting his hands and biting his lip. The whole situation clearly made him feel anxious. Jenny was no where in sight and Ada stood back a few feet looking perplexed.

Captain Latimer did not say a word, he just looked at me. He swallowed hard and I saw that his eyes were glassy with unshed tears.

I offered him the most awkward "Hello" in the history of hellos.

"Miss Montague," he said thickly. He took his hat off and bowed slightly. "I had not," he paused. "I had not expected to see you here today."

He was holding up, I thought, rather well from a man who had unexpectedly come across a woman he thought was dead.

Not sure what to say I shrugged and responded, "I was visiting some friends and fancied a walk in the park."

"How delightful to run into old friends," said Ada warmly. I have no idea how she missed the children's exclamations of joy over the fact that I wasn't dead or why she thought that this meeting was in any way delightful.

"Indeed," said Captain Latimer. He reached for my hand but then pulled his hand back and stuffed it into the pocket of his trousers.

I felt sorry for him. It was painfully clear that he had been very fond of the other me and that her, my, death had distressed him deeply.

"Would you like to walk?" I asked far more boldly than I felt.

His smile was a mixture of relief, gratitude and another ill defined emotion. He offered me his arm and I took it feeling very posh.

The children started whispering together and as Captain Latimer led me out of the hedge and onto the path they followed behind. I resisted the urge to look back to see what the Doctor and Ada were doing. The Doctor was probably flailing and panicking. A small part of me thought that it served him right. He should have just brought me straight home after Trenzalore. None of this mucking around Victorian London business.

At first Captain Latimer walked stiffly by my side, but after a few minutes I felt him relax. He tucked my arm closely to him. Not as close as the Doctor had when we had pretended to be married at Sweetville, but closer, I suspected, than he should have with an unmarried acquaintance.

"Miss Montague," he said after we had been walking in silence for some minutes. "I hope you do not think this forward of me, but I must ask..."

"How am I not dead?" I supplied.

He let out a breath and nodded.

I honestly didn't know what to say. Could I tell him the truth? That he'd fallen in love with a version of me that had splintered off of my real self when I had entered the Doctor's timestream to save him from the Great Intelligence. But then, I supposed, I'd have to explain what the Great Intelligence was and I wasn't too sure what it was myself. Only that it was evil and their henchmen were pretty much the creepiest things I'd ever seen.

Or should I tell him a lie? Tell him that I faked my death and ran off with the Doctor. That would break his heart, but it was almost true if you looked at it in a certain light.

I took a breath, ready to tell him that I had faked my death when he spoke again.

"When I saw you fall, Miss Montague, Clara, I felt as if I were falling with you. I died when you died."

Right, he had apparently witnessed my death and I'd died from a fall. Maybe I could convince him that the fall had been faked—like on that detective show on the telly that Angie watched.

"When we buried you," he continued, "I buried my own heart."

So he had been at my funeral. I would just have to tell him that the coffin was empty.

"I placed roses in your arms," he said. "Sentimental fool that I am."

Lying about a faked death was right out then. The truth it would have to be.

"How much do you know about the Doctor?" I asked.

We heard footsteps running up behind us before Captain Latimer could answer. We turned to find Jenny coming towards us, hugging a wooden box to her chest and wearing thick insulated gloves. The Doctor was right at her heels.

"I've got the memory worm," she said with a pant.

The Doctor clapped his hands together and said, "Right, shall we do the children first or the Captain?'


	5. Chapter 5

"Wait," I said, jumping in between the eager looking Doctor, Jenny and the memory worm (whatever that was) and Captain Latimer and the children. "You are not going to 'do' anyone until you tell me what's going on." I crossed my arms over my chest and narrowed my eyes at the Doctor. "No more of this 'let's keep Clara in the dark' nonsense."

The Doctor stopped short and then rubbed the back of his neck. "Fine, fine. I'll tell you everything you want to know. But first we need to erase their memories."

"You can't do that!" cried Francesca. "I don't want to forget Miss Montegue, I don't want to go back to thinking that she's dead!"

"I'll stop you," said Digby, holding up his hands like a boxer. "Miss Montague is our governess."

Captain Latimer stepped in front of his children.

"It's for the best, Clara," said Jenny. She handed the box to Ada to hold while she opened the lid. I saw now that the gloves weren't just ordinary gloves, they were gauntlets.

"Yes, Clara," the Doctor agreed. "They can't go on remembering you like this. You aren't the girl who was their governess. They need to be able to mourn her and move on."

I thought about what River had said in Trenzalore, about being left in the library like a book on a shelf. The Doctor wanted the Latimers to forget about the Clara who they have loved and leave her behind, like he'd left his wife behind.

"What do you mean she wasn't our governess," Captain Latimer said. "Look at her. This is Miss Montague—this is Clara." He pointed at me with each word for emphasis.

"I've got the worm, Doctor," said Jenny, holding up a squirming worm who looked like an oversized maggot.

Francesca gasped and covered her eyes.

"I mean," said the Doctor. "That this is not the Clara that was your governess."

"Actually, Doctor," said Ada. "At the heart of it all she _is_ the Clara they knew, isn't she? The same woman, scattered across your timestream. At least, that's how I understood it."

I had forgotten all about Ada. She had come up behind the Doctor using the parasol as a cane to guide her steps and placed a hand on his arm. The Doctor must have told her about the events of Trenzalore, or maybe Jenny and Madame Vastra had.

"Scattered across his timestream?" Captain Latimer said. "I'm afraid that I don't understand."

I spoke quickly (my mum always said I could out talk anyone), keeping a wary eye on Jenny and the flopping worm. "I'm from the twenty first century. The Doctor can travel in time and space and one day he decided to take me with him on account of meeting me before.

"He had an enemy, a man, or a thing called the Great Intelligence. It found a way to enter the Doctor's life and kill him over and over again. I followed it and I was broken apart into thousands of pieces and each of those pieces saved the Doctor and I really don't understand it all. But one of those pieces knew you and was the children's governess and she must have saved the Doctor but then she died. So she's really me, but not me, too."

I was out of breath by the time I was finished.

"I see," said Captain Latimer.

The Doctor's shoulders dropped and I knew I had won. I think he was disappointed that he didn't get to use the memory worm.

"Put it back, Jenny," he said. He glanced around and I noticed that as bustling as the park was, the path Captain Latimer and I had led the others down was deserted. No one else had witnessed the stand off.

Captain Latimer took his children's hands. "Where are you staying, Miss Montague?" he asked.

"You can just call me, Clara," I said. I glanced over at Jenny and Ada who had returned the worm to its case. "And I'm not actually sure where I'm staying."

"221B Baker Street, sir," Jenny supplied as she peeled off the gauntlets.

"Seriously?" I said.

Jenny gave me a puzzled look and the Doctor winked.

Of course, I thought. Of course a lizard woman, her wife and their potato-head butler would be the inspiration for Sherlock Holmes. Sometimes I think that when the Doctor showed up he dragged me into an alternate timeline.

"I would like to call on you tomorrow, Miss...Clara," said the captain.

"Oh, yes. Yes, of course." I tried to think of what people in novels did when they called on each other. "We can have tea."

He smiled at that, a genuine smile. "Thank you, Clara," he said. He looked down at his children. "Franny, Digby, say goodbye to Clara."

"Goodbye, Clara," said Franny. She bobbed in a curtsy.

Digby hugged me tightly. "Goodbye, I'm so glad you're not dead."

"Me too," I said. I ruffled his hair.

"Until tomorrow, Clara," said Captain Latimer. He tipped his hat at me and then turned and ushered his children briskly down the path. He was probably expecting the Doctor to change his mind and get the worm out again. Smart man. The Doctor lies.

However, in this instance, he seemed to be telling the truth. The worm stayed in its box and the four of us started back toward 221B.

It seemed to take longer to walk back and by then it was noon and the sun was uncomfortably hot. I was thirsty and my head started to hurt. We were greeted at the door by Strax with threats of dismemberment and told that Madame Vastra was in the conservatory with refreshments.

I felt as if a clamp had slipped over my head and was squeezing down on my brain just behind my right eye.

I said that I had a headache and wanted to just lay down. Jenny took me to the bedroom I had used the night before. As we ascended the stairs I happened to look behind me and I saw the Doctor watching me. His forehead was wrinkled and he looked concerned.

Jenny laid out the nightgown and fetched a pitcher of cool water to wash my face and neck. She promised to bring me something to eat and drink and then left me to change.

I drew the curtains and stood for a minute in the blessedly dim light. I'd never gotten a migraine before and I wondered if this was one. I felt like my eyes weren't focusing properly even though I rationally knew I was seeing clearly. I could feel the pain throb behind my eye with each beat of my heart. I was just dehydrated I told myself.

I scooped some water out of the pitcher with my hands and drank it before washing my face. I took off the dress and draped it over a chair and pulled on the nightgown. It felt wonderfully light and cool.

The door opened softly and Jenny walked in. On a tray she had a glass of water with slices of lemon floating in it as well as some dry toast. She left the tray for me and said that I only had to ring the bell if I needed anything else. I drank the water, but left the toast. I didn't feel like eating.

I whimpered a little as I lay down, just moving made my head hurt even more.

Stupid sun, stupid Doctor, stupid memory worm, I thought as I pulled the pillow over my head to block out even more light.

There was flash and a sizzle and a smell like burnt metal. I remembered that smell from the dream conference. It was the smell that had heralded River's arrival when she'd materialized into her seat with a puff of smoke and a burst of light.

River had returned.

My head was throbbing too much to contemplate pulling the pillow down so I could see her so I settled on a barely dignified moan.

I felt the bed sink as River sat down beside me. She tugged the pillow off of my face and held up a syringe.

"This won't hurt a bit," she said.

"You're lying," I said.

"Yep," she said cheerfully and then jabbed me in the arm.

To be fair, the jab hurt a lot less than my head did right then.

Immediately the pain receded and I let out a long slow breath.

"Thank you," I said.

"Anytime," said River.

I pushed the pillow the rest of the way off of my face and sat up. I scrubbed tears I hadn't realized I'd shed off of my face.

"That was awful," I said.

"I thought it might be," she said. "I'm afraid it's going to be a regular occurrence for a while."

"What? Why? I don't get headaches," I said. "Well, not normally."

"It's all of those lives you lived but didn't live. They're all in there," she tapped the side of her head. "Jostling around for space."

"I have hundreds of lifetimes of memories in my head?"

"Thousands," said River.

I groaned. "Lovely. Just lovely."

"My father could relate," River said.

"How so?" I asked.

"He waited two thousand years for my mother. He guarded her while she was locked in the Pandorica."

Something about the word _Pandorica_ sounded so familiar. Like a fairy tale my mum had once told me.

"Is there anything in that library of yours about the Victorian Clara?" I asked, changing the subject. "Angie and Artie found a picture of her. I met the children she looked after and the man who loves her, but I have no idea who she is."

River sat down on the side of the bed and tipped her head to the side and gave me a measuring look. Then she said, "She was you. Stubborn, independent and very clever. She was compassionate and kind. She was very brave, even when she was afraid."

I looked the empty glass and plate of toast on the table. I didn't feel like I was a brave person. Just someone who got scared and managed to hold it together.

She didn't look at me as she continued speaking. "Your mother was a former governess and your father owned a tavern. They were childless for many years until you were born on November 23, 1866. You were named for your mother."

I wanted to interrupt and say that my mother was named Ellie and not Clara, but I held my tongue.

"Your mother died when you were 16-"

I sucked in a breath, stung by sudden grief. I blinked back tears. River still did not look at me, but she reached over and took my hand. Her hand was warm and her grip firm and reassuring.

"You were visiting your mother's grave when you saw Captain Lamiter and his children in the cemetery. They were visiting Mrs. Lamiter's grave. You understood their sorrow and grief and so you decided to help them. You borrowed money from your father and bought a second hand dress on Dury Lane and forged a letter of introduction."

"How do you know all of this?" I asked. "It's not in a book somewhere, is it?"

River looked up at me, and smiled. Her eyes shone in the dim light. "You told me."

"When?" I asked. I certainly didn't remember telling her anything like this.

"Spoilers," she said.

I scowled. "Stupid word, spoilers."

She smirked. "Infuriating, isn't it?"

"Highly."

River told me about how the children have loved me and how Captain Latimer had loved me too. As I listened to her speak it somehow became easier for me to think of Victorian Clara as part of myself. She described the Latimer house and the escapades and adventures I'd had with the children. I heard about the double life I'd led—barmaid by night, governess by day. As she narrated I could picture her words in my head. Swirling together, painted half in imagination and half in memory.

I listened, breathless, to the story of the Snowmen and the Great Intelligence. I sat stunned when she told me how I'd died. Captain Latimer had arranged for me to be buried in the same cemetery as his wife—which had fueled rampant gossip.

"He told me that he buried me with roses."

"They are your favorite flower."

"How do you know?" I asked.

"Did you know that they're the Doctor's favorite flower, too?"

"He likes roses? He doesn't seem the type," I said.

"Roses are very special to him," said River.

I could tell that there was more that she wasn't saying.

"Captain Latimer is coming over tomorrow."

She smiled. "I like him. Quiet, but lovely."

"You know him?"

"Will know him," she said.

There was a tentative knock at the door.

"Clara?" It was the Doctor.

Better go," whispered River. She reached for her wrist and with a flash and shimmer she was gone leaving nothing but that strange smell behind.

"Clara?" The Doctor knocked again.

"Come in," I said.

He opened the door and poked his head in. If he'd seen the flash from under the door and smelled the metallic scent in the air, he didn't let on.

"How's your head?" he asked.

"Fine," I said. I didn't tell him what River had said about the headaches coming back and being the result of too many memories inside my head. I had a feeling that if I told the Doctor that he'd get out the memory worm. I didn't want him to take my memories away and I don't know how I knew it, but I knew that he would do it if he felt he had to.

"Good, good," he said. "I think we're going to stay here a while. Let you rest up and all that."

"I don't need rest," I said.

He rolled his eyes. "You don't _now _because you're all rested up. But...I just want you to rest. Stay here and rest. It's safe here for now. I peeked."

"Isn't that cheating?"

The Doctor shrugged and plopped down on the bed, right where River had been sitting. He said, "It was worth it to cheat this time."

It was as close as he'd come so far to thanking me for what I'd done.

"You're welcome," I said and shifted so that I was sitting next to him. I rested my head against is shoulder and we sat together, still and quiet in the darkened bedroom until Jenny fetched us for tea.


	6. Chapter 6

That night I fell asleep almost at once.

In my dreams I remembered Trenzalore.

His tomb, the TARIDS, was overgrown with vines. There was hardly any vegetation on Trenzalore but the console room was infested with strangling vines winding around every support, every fixture and in every nook and cranny. In the center of it all, blazing up from what used to be the control panel, was his timestream. It writhed and twisted, tendrils flexing and snapping—like the vines engulfing the room.

It was beautiful and terrible. The whole room prickled with its power and intensity. When we were first ushered into the room by the Whisper Men the light had blazed pure white. It was almost garish in its luminosity. Deep within the TARDIS, reverberating in the room, was the solemn steady tone of the cloister bell. I remembered that sound, it was the sound I'd heard during the day that never was. I felt a little sick and giddy from all of the memories of that day. If only I'd know what was to come. Remembering one day that I shouldn't have is nothing compared with millions.

When the Great Intelligence entered it and was consumed, the light became red and angry. Waves of fear and hatred emanated from within it. The Doctor collapsed on the floor, spasming, agony contorting his face. I dropped to my knees beside him, uncertain how to help. River reached for him, but stopped herself. She stepped back and held herself stiffly.

My mind was racing. The Doctor had said that I was a clever girl.

"What's wrong with him? What's happening?" I asked bending over him, clutching at the lapels of his jacket.

"He's being rewritten. Simeon is attacking his entire timeline. He's dying all at once. The Dalek Asylum, Androzani-" Madame Vastra said.

"What did you say? Did you say the Dalek Asylum?" I remembered that phrase. The Doctor had shouted it at me the day that never was. He had accused me of dying there and of not dying. Of somehow being alive when I wasn't supposed to be.

Madame Vastra and Jenny were talking, but I wasn't listening. I shook the Doctor, willing him to look at me. "The Dalek Asylum. You said it was me that saved you. How? Victorian London. How? How could I have been in Victorian London?"

"No," the Doctor moaned. "Please, stop. My life...my whole life is burning..."

I looked up at River. She had the strangest expression on her face. Enigmatic. Despite what Madame Vastra had believed at our dream conference, River knew me. She didn't just recognize me, she _knew_ me. It made absolutely no sense. I'd never met her before and she was dead. I stared at her, speechless at my realization and she smiled.

The Doctor whimpered and I looked back down at him, smoothing his hair out of his face. He felt feverish to my touch. He really was dying.

I had to save him. If he was to be believed, I'd already saved him twice before. Somehow I had appeared when he needed me most and I had saved his life.

My heart stopped.

The Great Intelligence was in his timestream killing him thousands and thousands of times. Why couldn't I do the same? Except instead of killing him, I would save him.

"I have to go in there."

"Please, please, no," the Doctor said. His voice was weak and he could not swallow a sob.

"But this is what I've already done," I said, feeling my resolve grow with each word. "You've already seen me do it. I'm the Impossible Girl, and this is why."

"Whatever you're thinking of doing, don't," said River, but her protestation lacked conviction.

I looked up at her. She looked calm but under the surface I saw weariness in her eyes. She wasn't calm, I thought, she was resigned.

"If I step in there, what happens?"

"The time winds will tear you into a million pieces," she said. "A million versions of you, living and dying all over time and space—like echoes."

"But the echoes could save the Doctor, right?" I asked.

"But they won't be you. The real you will die. They'll just be copies." Her voice was so sad. There was more to the story of her death, I thought, than either she or the Doctor had let on. Tragedy lurked unspoken.

I took a deep breath, mind made up. "But they'll be real enough to save him. It's like my mum said: 'The soufflé isn't the soufflé, the soufflé is the recipe.'"

I was the recipe. I was the original and all of the echoes that followed would be based on me. If I wanted to save him, all of the copies of me would want to save him too.

"It's the only way to save him, isn't it?" I asked River.

She nodded

"Well, how about that? I'm soufflé girl after all," I said, fighting in the urge to giggle. Hysteria, that's what it was. I scrambled to my feet.

Madame Vastra was back (I vaguely remembered her leaving with the others), but she was alone.

"No, please," the Doctor begged, too weak and in too much pain to stop me.

"If this works," I said walking towards the time wound, "Get out of here as fast as you can. And spare me a thought now and then." Artie and Angie would miss me, and my Dad would probably think I'd died—but he and I hadn't talked much since mum died.

"No, Clara," said the Doctor.

At the precipice of the time wound I turned around. I could feel it, angry and swirling behind him. Icy and hot all at once. "In fact, you know what? Run. Run, you clever boy, and remember me."

I was ripped apart by barbed whips. Lashed by shards of time which stung like nettles being flogged across raw flesh. I fell and fell through fire and smoke and ice and snow. I was stretched and splintered. I fwas an object immersed in dry ice and then smashed against concrete.

Then all at once, I landed.

I was on a battle field studded with grave stones.

"Doctor?" I called. I felt dizzy and overwrought. "Doctor! Please, please, I don't know where I am!" I staggered forward. All I could think of, all I knew was _him_. It was a horrible, awful feeling, knowing that all I was had been reduced to a mantra of _Doctor-Doctor-Doctor_ playing out in my mind against the thudding of my heart.

"Clara, you can hear me, I know you can," said the Doctor's voice. A figure walked past me. An old man with longish gray hair. He was so familiar, like the face of someone I knew as a child and then met again as an adult.

"I can't see you," I said.

"I'm everywhere. You're inside my time stream."

Then I knew why I recognized the old man, it was the Doctor.

"I can see you," I said. More Doctors ran past. I was buffeted on all sides by Doctors. "All your different faces, they're here."

His voice was far off. "Those are my ghosts. My past. Every good day, every bad day."

Something knocked me to the ground. I clutched at the dirt, the dizziness was overwhelming. The air around me was pressing down, squeezing and pinching. "What's wrong? What's happening?"

His voice was nearer. "I'm inside my own time stream. It's collapsing in on itself."

"Well, get out then," I said. Anything to make the horrible pressing dizziness go away.

"Not until I've got you," he said.

"I don't even know who I am," I said. And I didn't. My identity had been scrubbed away by the time winds. I felt nauseated.

"You're my Impossible Girl. I'm sending you something. Not from my past, from yours. Look up."

I could hardly lift my head.

"Look," he repeated.

Although there were no trees, a large brown leaf floated towards me. I stood, legs shaking.

"This is you, Clara. Everything you were or will be. Take it. You blew into the world on this leaf. Hold tight. It will take you home."

I caught it and stumbled forward. My heart was beating so fast it felt as if I had two hearts warring in my chest. I desperately swallowed a sob.

"Clara! Clara! Come on. Come on, to me, now."

I looked up and there he was. Arms extended, emerging from the mist. He looked no different from the other Doctors who had gone past me and I knew that they were just figments of memory.

"You can do it. I know you can," he said.

"How?" I asked. Each step was a battle. My body quavered with exhaustion.

"Because it's impossible. And you're my Impossible Girl. How many times have you save me, Clara? Just this once, just for the hell of it, let me save you. You have to trust me Clara. I'm real. Just one more step."

I tumbled forward and he caught me.

"Clara," the Doctor said. "My Clara."

Something, someone, caught his eye and I felt him stiffen. I followed his gaze and saw a man standing some distance away, his back to us, surveying the fields. In the strange orange-red light he reminded me of Nero watching Rome burn.

"Who's that?" I asked.

"Never mind," said the Doctor. "Let's go back."

"But who is he?" I asked. I don't know why, but it seemed vital that I know who that man was. The strange man who had invaded the Doctor's timestream.

"He's me. There's only me here, that's the point. Now let's get back."

"But I never saw that one," I insisted. I knew it was true. "I saw all of you. Eleven faces, all of them you. You're the eleventh Doctor."

"I said he was me. I never said he was the Doctor."

"I don't understand."

"Look, my name, my real name—" he broke off. "That is not the point. The name I chose is the Doctor. The name you choose...it's like, it's like a promise you make. He's the one who broke the promise."

Everything crashed in around me, darkness roaring in my ears.

"Clara? Clara?" I heard the Doctor through it all. "Clara!" In one swift movement he lifted me off of the ground and cradled me against his chest.

I woke up with a start. The spherical lamp glowing warmly beside my pillow. I was sticky with sweat, but also chilled. I rubbed my face and sat up in bed. I looked around the room half expecting to see River somewhere, but aside from me, the room was empty.

I lay back down, the images and memories from my dream, from my experiences at Trenzalore, playing out in my mind's eye.

But I had the nagging feeling that I had forgotten something important.

I did not fall back asleep for a very long time.


	7. Chapter 7

It was that next morning that I first became aware of how keenly the Doctor was watching me. I think that if he hadn't know I would have complained, he would have had his sonic screwdriver out scanning me all day. As it was, I found myself under watchful supervision for most of the day. If he wasn't at my side, someone else was. At one point, Strax even tried to accompany me into the loo.

I suppose that I shouldn't have been surprised. After what had happened at Trenzalore it only made sense that he would want to keep a close eye on me. It was hard to shake those memories off, especially after the vivid dream I'd had the night before. And he didn't even know about the headaches and the memories competing in my mind.

I kept thinking, though, that I shouldn't have those memories. Not the ones of Victorian Me. She was just an echo. A splinter. Like River had said at Trenzalore, she wasn't me...but then again, River had also told me that she _was_ me. I decided that River lied just as much as her husband did—and she was better at it, too.

I dislike liars. I always have. I suppose it comes from my childhood.

When I was very little, before I can even properly remember things, my mum and dad started telling me a story about serendipity. How one stray leaf happened to bring them together. How if it hadn't been for that leaf they might never have gotten married. And how if they hadn't gotten married I wouldn't have been a part of their family. I liked that story. I liked the leaf, too.

The actual leaf had disintegrated and crumbled away long before Mum gave me her special book. At the park one day she and I found another leaf that looked just like it. It was that leaf that I sacrificed to save Merry Gallel. The actual leaf wasn't important, it was what the leaf _stood_ _for_ that made all the difference in the world. Like the soufflé recipe.

The reason that the story about the leaf was so important to me was because it represented a truth. A truth carefully worded to be accessible by a child, but a stark truth nonetheless.

You see, if the leaf hadn't blown into my father's face, if my mother hadn't saved his life, if they hadn't gotten married, then the lawyer looking for a married couple on behalf of his client wouldn't have picked them. But they were, and so he did.

I used to wonder if he picked Mum and Dad because they looked like me. Especially Mum. No one ever believed me when I said that I was adopted.

When I was eight years old I told my class at school that I was adopted. My teacher scolded me for being a liar in front of the entire class. I can still remember how my cheeks burned with shame and how for a terrible afternoon I wondered if my parents had lied to me and I wasn't adopted after all. When I came home and told Mum all about it she pulled me into her lap (even though I usually said that at eight I was too old for such things) and whispered that she wasn't a liar, and I wasn't a liar. She told me the story of the serendipitous leaf again.

From that day forward I have always held liars in contempt.

Though, I wasn't quite sure what to do about the Doctor and River. Both of them were clearly liars, but I couldn't muster up contemptuous feelings for either. Instead I decided upon wary suspicion. The Doctor was oblivious to my newly decided feelings and River didn't show up. So much for my stubborn resolve.

Jenny and Ada kept me busy in the kitchen for most of the morning. We made little cakes and sandwiches for tea later in the afternoon. There was a peculiar mismatch of technology in the basement kitchen. Heaps of era—appropriate Victorian looking gadgets and an odd assortment of objects that were clearly from the future. One of those things was a sleek looking oven with a cook top.

"Wedding present from the Doctor," said Jenny with a grin. She enjoyed showing me how to set the temperature and waited expectantly for me to marvel at how the exterior never got hot.

I didn't say a word about the equally nice cooker I'd left my soufflé abandoned in in the twenty first century and told Jenny that I'd never seen such a miracle machine before. She was pleased as can be by this declaration and told me that if I was very careful, I could try to use it on my own.

Ada had me help her slice cucumbers while Jenny fussed happily over her cooker and monitored the cake baking. The two of them kept up a steady stream of chatter about a play they had gone to see a few nights before and whether or not they should go see it again.

"The whole theater is lit up by electric lights," Jenny explained for my benefit. "All of those bright lights, glittering in the chandeliers. Much nicer looking than the old limes"

"Lime lights are a real thing?" I said.

Ada laughed. "Of course they are." She then tried to explain how they worked to me, but I'm afraid that I didn't understand much of it beyond the fact that they were dangerous and involved setting fire to calcium-something.

Just as we finished in the kitchen, Madame Vastra fetched me and brought me upstairs. She took me to her library and directed me to an armchair. A blanket was dumped in a heap on my lap. She sat down by the window and read the paper. I had nothing to do (expect, I suppose, sit under the blanket and play at being an invalid). This is when I excused myself to the loo and had to argue with Strax over my right to have a pee without a guard.

When I emerged from the loo the Doctor wrapped his arm around my shoulder and walked me into the TARDIS. I foolishly hoped that we were leaving. Instead he sat me down in a jump seat and told me stories about a woman named Martha ("She's brilliant, she really is. I'll have to introduce you.") while he dismantled the control panel and began to fiddle with it.

It reminded me of the way a boyfriend I had years ago used to take apart his car so he'd have something to do when he talked to me. He was too nervous just to talk. He had to be doing something else.

Every now and then the Doctor would look up and study me. Then he'd shrug off his pensive turn and tell me about the time Martha met Shakespeare or how she looked after him when he'd disguised himself as a human. Knowing everything I know about him now, I think the reason he talked so much about Martha is because she's the only companion he'd had in the past few centuries of his life who hadn't walked away from him heart broken and emotionally damaged. Bleak assessment, but true,

The Doctor has a way of inserting himself into your life so that one day you look around and realize that everything about you now orbits him. He's become the center of your universe. I'd sensed that danger, I think, the moment he'd shown up outside the door dressed as a monk. He was someone who was used to becoming the center of everyone's attention. I think that's why I set up such defined boundaries. Once weekly trips. No nights spent over on the TARDIS. Return home on schedule.

Then Trenzalore happened and my well laid plans were demolished.

Let's be honest, could a girl possibly orbit around the Doctor anymore than if she risks life, limb—her very _identity_ and _existence—_to save him? I think not.

"You're awfully quiet," the Doctor said.

"Lost in my thoughts," I said. "I'd offer to help you, but I'd probably blow it up again."

For a split second he frowned before he decided to laugh at my joke. I think that it unnerved him that I remembered the day that never happened. I resisted the urge to look over my shoulder to see if a smoldering zombie of myself was lurching in behind me.

"No," he said. "You wouldn't blow her up. That wasn't your fault anyway. Come on over, I'll show you what I'm doing."

I got up and joined him at the control panel. He'd lifted off the top cover to reveal the complex web of wires and cables. Beneath the jumble I saw the beautiful circular designs I'd seen elsewhere in the TARDIS etched into the console frame in gold.

I reached in and traced a finger along a circle. "What is it?" I asked.

"New Gallifreyan. It's how Timelords write. Wrote. Well, I can write in it. River could, too." He ran his fingers through his hair and exhaled. Then he added, "It's labels for the wires."

"What, like, 'Time Wire' or 'Space Cord'?"

"Something like that."

"It's too pretty to be something so boring," I said. I pointed to the nested rings above our heads. The outsides of the rings featured more Gallifreyan. "What do they mean?"

"Do you know what a compass rose is?"

"Like on a map?"

"Yes. They're like that, expect for time and space and, you know, they're not much like a compass rose at all, actually. Never mind, forget that compassion."

"That's a rubbish explanation. You can't just start comparing it to something and then tell me to forget it," I said. I crossed my arms over my chest.

He shook a finger at me. "Now, don't get snippy, Clara."

"I'm not being snippy. I'm just pointing out that you're terrible at explaining things."

"Am not," he said. He pouted, but he was trying hard not to smile through his pout which rather ruined the effect.


	8. Chapter 8

By lunch I was quite bored. I'm generally good at keeping myself occupied, but knowing that my every move was being watched made me feel unnerved and slightly anxious.

I left the Doctor tinkering in the TARDIS and thought I might go for a walk in the park. One look outside swiftly changed my mind. A thick fog had descended on the city. And not an ordinary sort of fog either. It was dense and dark—almost rust brown in color. It smelled foul. It was the most sinister looking fog I'd ever seen.

It looked like the sort of fog which might conceal a shark. The back of my head prickled.

"Doctor," I called, certain that London was under attack by some vicious fog alien. "Doctor!"

He came racing out from the TARDIS, Madame Vastra and Strax close on his heels.

"What is it, boy?" cried Strax with glree brandishing a massive gun. "What should I shoot first?"

I pointed out the window.

The Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver and waved it at the fog outside the window. It buzzed and the glass reflected it's green light.

"It's just the fog, Clara," said Madame Vastra. I could tell by the tone of her voice that she thought me foolish.

Which a flip of his wrist the Doctor deactivated his sonic. He bumped my shoulder with his and said, "Better safe than sorry, eh?"

"Blast!" said Strax. He scowled and marched out of the room muttering under his breath.

"Does no one else see how disgusting that fog looks?" I asked.

"It's a product of the industrial revolution. All of that coal from a million cook fires spill out into the air," said the Doctor. "It chokes the air. Some days are worse than others."

"It wasn't like this this morning," I said.

Madame Vastra said, "A shift in the wind can bring the fog in. It's horrendous, but the Doctor assures me that the future will see improvement."

He nodded. "By 2115 the air of London will be declared pollution free."

"Why do you and Jenny live here when you could live in 2115 when the air isn't so..." I waved my hand at the window.

"Because this is our time. We fit into this time and this place. To live in another time would be," she paused. "It would be like wearing a shoe that doesn't fit quite right."

I glanced at the Doctor. "Do you have a time that you belong to?"

I don't know why, but I knew that the answer was yes. There was a time and a place that he belonged to. If I could just concentrate enough I would know where and when that was. It was like having a word on the tip of my tongue but not being able to remember it. I felt a dull ache where the base of my skull met my neck.

"No," the Doctor said. He grinned and said, "I belong everywhere." He spun around the room with his arms thrown out for emphasis.

He was lying.

Jenny came and fetched us all for lunch and after lunch I helped her clear and wash the dishes. It was nice to do something as mindless as scrub dishes clean and when she asked me if I wanted to help her clean the upstairs carpet I agreed.

"How long have you been traveling with the Doctor?" Jenny asked. She opened up a tin and sprinkled something black across the rug.

I shrugged. "Once a week for...two months? Maybe a little more now."

"Once a week? You don't live on the TARDIS?" Closing the tin, Jenny set it on a ledge and began to sweep the rug.

"Live on the TARDIS? No, of course not. There aren't any bedrooms," I said. And I would know, I thought, I'd seen practically everything on the day that never was.

Jenny chuckled as she brushed the pile of dust and black flakes into a dust pan. "Oh, there are bedrooms."

The way she said it brought a flush to my cheeks. It would seem that she and Madame Vastra had made use of the bedrooms on the TARDIS.

"What are you doing?" I asked to change the subject.

"These are used tea grounds," she explained as she deposited the contents of the dust pan into another tin. "I save them after we have tea and dry them out. They help collect the soot and dust for sweeping carpets."

"What are you doing with them when you're done?" I asked, pointing at the tin.

"I sell them to the rag-and-bone man. He's a good one. He doesn't resell them."

"Resell them?"

"Yes, you know, to shops to sell again for tea. That's why you never buy the cheapest tea. It's all sweepings."

I blanched and Jenny laughed.

"Here, give it a go," she said. She handed me the first tin with the dried tea leaves.

I took a pinch-full and scattered it over the rug.

"Don't be afraid to use a bit more," said Jenny.

"Did you know the Clara that used to live here?" I asked, depositing a more generous handful of tea leaves over the rug.

"She came to see us, she need to find the Doctor."

"Why?"

"There was trouble at the Latimer house. The children were having nightmares and something was wrong with the snow."

"The snow?" I thought about what River had told me the night before as I took the broom that Jenny offered me and swept across the rug.

"Simeon—the Great Intelligence—he'd done something to the snow. He'd made it alive."

For the space of a breath I wasn't in the upstairs hall brushing tea leaves into a pile with Jenny, I was sitting in the conservatory, back ramrod straight, staring down Madame Vastra. It was winter and although the window panes were frosted, the conservatory was quite warm. A glass of something red sat on a table between us. It wasn't red wine.

Madame Vastra had been asking me questions, vetting me, to see if I merited the Doctor's attention. We had been verbally sparing, back and forth. She had every word at her disposal at all times and I had to arm myself with single words.

"We are the Doctor's friends," Madame Vastra said. "We assist him in his isolation but that does not mean we approve of it. So, a test for you. Give me a message for the Doctor. Tell him all about the snow and what fresh danger you believe it presents, and above all, explain why he should help you. But do it in one word. You're thinking it is impossible that such a word exists, or that you could even find it. Let's see if the gods are with you."

"Pond," I said.

"What?" said Jenny. She was kneeling on the rug, holding the dust pan for me.

I looked down at her and blinked. The hallway seemed so dim after the brightness of the conservatory. Jenny's expression was caught between confusion and concern.

"What?" I asked.

"Why did you say 'pond'?"

"I didn't," I said. The vision of the conservatory seemed dim, like a half-forgotten day dream. I felt a stabbing sensation in the back of my head and I held back a wince.

"Yes, you did. Just now."

I held out the broom to her. "I was lost in thought, I guess. I'm getting a headache."

Jenny frowned and took the broom as she got to her feet. "Do you want a headache powder?"

"Have you got something for a headache?"

She nodded.

"That would be lovely," I said. I massaged the back of my head. "I think it's the fog. My body isn't used to it."

Jenny didn't believe me for a second, but she didn't press me. We went down to the kitchen and she fetched a glass of water and a twist of brown paper.

"Open the end and swallow it in one go," she said.

I dumped the white powder into my mouth and swallowed then spluttered and gagged at the bitter taste. It was the terrible taste of aspirin that started to dissolved on your tongue before you can swallow the tablet. Gratefully I gulped the water down. I handed Jenny my empty glass and she refilled it and I drank that one as well.

By my third glass of water the bitter taste had mostly left my mouth and I sat down at the table sipping it while Jenny fetched ice and salt. My head still hurt but I think that the horrific taste had distracted my brain from the pain. Perhaps that was how the medicine worked.

Jenny combined the salt and ice and wrapped them up in a square of clean linen and tied up the ends. "Put this on the spot that hurts the most," she said.

I did as directed.

"It's nearly time for tea. I'll find you a dress in the TARDIS and then you can change."

I'd almost forgotten about tea. Captain Latimer was coming. I wondered if seeing him would trigger more head splitting memories. Hopefully I'd be able to soldier through the pain and not let the Doctor notice.

Jenny got a dress and we went up to my room to change. By then my head had recovered enough that I could put the ice back in the washbasin. The dress she'd chosen was pale green with a cream floral print, sleeves that puffed at the shoulder but were fitted to the wrist, a high color with lace accents. She also helped me fix my hair and showed me how to sit and look like "a real proper lady."

She dressed in her maid uniform, a black dress with a freshly starched white apron and a white cap with trails of lace down the back. I followed her out of the TARDIS into the front parlor where Ada and the Doctor were already sitting. The Doctor was eating the little sandwiches we had made just that morning. Madame Vastra and Strax were no where to be found.

"Don't want to upset your gentleman caller," said Jenny. She gestured for me to sit down and handed me Captain Latimer's card.

I turned the card over in my hands while we waited. The Doctor, tired of his sandwiches, stood up and started pacing.

The more I thought about it, the less I wanted the Captain to arrive. I probably should have let the Doctor use the memory slug-thing on him and the children. The moment I had that thought though, I knew that I never could have let him go through with it. It seemed cruel to rob someone of their memories—even if it was just a brief memory. Memories were what define a person.

What then, I wondered, would I become if I remembered more about this other Clara?

I wished I could ask the Doctor, but something kept me from broaching the topic with him. I wondered if River would show up again. Then I could ask her. (If she did reappear I was also going to demand my own supply of whatever it was she'd injected me with for my headache the day before. Jenny's powder and ice compress had dulled the pain, but it was returning like a tide ebbing in).

I heard a knock on the door and Strax cheerfully threatening someone in the hall. A moment later the door opened and Captain Latimer stepped in.

The Doctor ceased pacing and sat down next to me leaving the chair next to Ada for the Captain.

Pleasantries were exchanged and then Jenny came into the room with the tea. The Captain and the Doctor looked at me and I realized they were waiting for me to serve the tea. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat and thankfully Ada leaned forward and took over the serving.

Captain Latimer stiffly asked the Doctor about the weather and the Doctor, looking distinctly uncomfortable with such a mundane topic of conversation fidgeted and rambled about visiting a planet with fish in the fog.

I looked towards the windows. The fog was still thick outside. My head hurt.

Ada handed me my cup of tea and I stared down at it. I thought about Jenny's second tin of used up tea leaves and sweepings and wrinkled my nose.

"Is something the matter?" Captain Latimer asked me.

"This hasn't got dirt in it, has it?"

The Doctor snorted into his cup, Ada's raised a hand to her mouth and Captain Latimer stared.

"I mean," I continued. "Jenny used tea leaves to clean the rugs. We're not _drinking _those leaves now, are we?" I swirled the tea in the cup, trying to see if there was anything floating in it.

Captain Latimer laughed nervously. "You really aren't her, are you?"

I looked at him. I mean, I properly looked at him for the first time since he'd got there. His face was solemn and wan. He held himself stiffly. There was sorrow and longing in his eyes and a hint of hope hidden in his features. He was a man who had truly been in love and who was now grief-stricken from its loss. The woman he'd loved sat before him, and at the same time she didn't. He was conflicted and torn between mourning, rejoicing and disappointment.

I thought about how I would feel if I had run into my mother by chance at the park. I would have been elated and thrilled beyond measure. But if I then saw that she wasn't my mother, not really, the disappointment would have drowned me.

I set my cup down and bit my lip. I shook my head. "I'm sorry, I'm not."

He sighed and slumped back in his chair, his eyes closed.

I stood and walked around the table as quickly as my long skirts would allow. I dropped to my knees beside his chair and touched his arm. "I'm so sorry, Captain."

He put his hand over mine and squeezed but did not open his eyes.

The Doctor clinked his cup against his saucer too loudly and Captain Latimer startled. He pulled away from me and sat up.

The moment broken I returned to my seat beside the Doctor.

"How are you children, Captain?" Ada asked.

"They are well," he said. He took his cup of tea and sipped. He looked up over the rim of the cup at me. "No dirt, Miss—Clara."

I smiled at him. "Thank you for braving the tea for me, Captain," I said.

Although it was weak, he returned my smile. "Is there anything else you'd like to me taste test?"

"I would say sandwiches," I said. "But the Doctor seems to have eaten them all."

"They were good!" the Doctor said. "Little sandwiches—mini. I like mini things. Mini things are cool."

Both Ada and the Captain looked baffled by the Doctor's comment and I just rolled my eyes.


	9. Chapter 9

_Notes:_ _Sorry for the long wait! I have most of the story outlined, but I couldn't decide how I wanted to approach the next part of my outline. I needed to get Clara and the Doctor out of London where they were as stagnant as the fog and into an adventure. Hopefully this chapter fits the bill!_

After the Captain left I told the Doctor that we had to leave. When he asked why I blamed the oppressive smog and the fact that I hadn't had a proper wash since before Trenzalore. The Doctor looked uncomfortable, but agreed that we could leave.

I was filled with relief. I went back to the bedroom and peeled off the tea gown and left it on the bed. Jenny could keep it if she wanted it. We were nearly the same size after all. I took out all of the hair pins and left those on the dressing table. I massaged my scalp. My head was throbbing in time with my heartbeat.

First things first when I got home: an aspirin tablet and then a long, long soak in the tub.

I changed into my own clothes and grabbed my satchel. I was almost out the door when I remembered River's lamp-orb-thing. It was still under the pillow. I hesitated, unsure if I should take it, but then I shrugged and retrieved it and shoved it into my bag. Artie might like it, I thought.

The Doctor was outside of the TARDIS saying goodbye to the others. Jenny and Ada gave him warm hugs while Madame Vastra's farewell was much more restrained. Strax cheerfully threatened death and destruction which the Doctor took with a grin gave the Sontaran a good natured slap on the back. I took a deep breath, wished my headache was gone, and stepped closer.

Jenny hugged me tightly and told me to keep in touch and I promised I would (although I hadn't a clue how I would accomplish that) and Ada hugged me too. She told me that it had been so nice to get to know me better.

"Until next time, Clara," said Madame Vastra as she inclined her head.

"Thank you for letting us stay here," I said.

A glimmer of a smile crossed her face. "You're quite welcome, my dear."

Strax called me a hero and saluted me (the Doctor had told him about our adventures with the Cybermen then) and offered to fight by my side whenever I needed his assistance. I thanked him and saluted back which caused him to go quite orange and I realized he was blushing.

With a last goodbye to all the Doctor and I swept into the TARDIS and we departed.

I deposited my bag on the jump seat and watched as the Doctor meandered around the console flipping switches and pulling knobs. The delight and urgency that normally accompanied this routine were absent.

"Something wrong?" I asked.

He looked up and seemed to be surprised that I'd noticed. I rolled my eyes. Of course I noticed that something was different.

"No, nope. Nothing wrong. Why don't you have a shower, eh?"

"Doctor?" I asked, crossing my arms. I quirked and eyebrow, but that only exacerbated my headache and I winced.

"You said the fog gave you a headache. You can shower on the TARDIS and wash the pollutants off. The sick bay has some tablets and things as well." He stepped around the other side of the console and hunched over the control panel so my view of him was obscured.

"Well, don't land anywhere until I get back," I said. "If I'm not here you'll probably take us into the middle of World War III."

"No, been there too many times already," the Doctor said. He didn't straighten and I still couldn't see him.

"Fine. Good. I'll won't be a mo," I said.

I knew where the sick bay was—once I'd scrapped a knee and had had to threaten the Doctor with bodily harm to keep him from carrying me over his shoulder back into the TARDIS. He had ushered me into the sick bay where he'd fussed over my knee to the point where one would have thought I'd lost a leg.

The sick bay did not look like the sterile utilitarian console room. It was bathed in soft gold and blue-green light., It had a glass floor and through the floor I could see a tangle of wires and tubes. The room had a domed ceiling and set into three of the walls there was a wide variety of medical-type equipment. Light came from roundels mounted in the walls amongst the equipment. There were two beds in the room, made up with soft white blankets and sheets.

The fourth wall was comprised almost entirely of drawers built into the wall itself. The drawers were semi-opaque and felt as if they were made of plastic. They were labeled with the intricate, interconnecting and bisecting circles of Gallifryan, but some had notes taped to the outside with English scribbled on them by two different hands.

One read: "Plasters, Bandages and Gauze" another said "For after you've been possessed by a water spirit from Kilnaerys 4," and yet another said "For headaches."

I opened the headache drawer and found neat rows of vials containing pills. The vials were marked with Gallifreyan, but some had English written on them in black marker. One said "Humans" another said "Silurians" and a third said "DO NOT TOUCH."

I did not touch.

I rummaged through the vials and at the bottom, beneath them all I found syringes like the one River used on me. I pulled one out and inspected it. More Gallifreyan, but no English. I put it back. I wasn't stupid enough to inject myself with a syringe containing an unknown substance—especially not one I'd found on the TARDIS. It was probably a murder plot on her part.

I opened up the vial that was labeled for humans and took two of the tablets. Then I returned everything to where I found it and went in search of the bathroom.

Thankfully the TARDIS was feeling like less of a cow and I found it quickly and had a blessedly long soak. By the time I was done the water was tepid and a bit dingy and my head felt a thousand times better.

I found clean clothes neatly folded up outside the bathroom door (thanks to the Doctor) and dressed quickly and rejoined him in the console room.

"Alright," I said, tugging a comb through my wet hair. "Let's go home."

"Right," said the Doctor looking incredibly guilty. "About that. I thought we could visit a nice quiet boring corner of the universe and see some nice quiet boring stars but when we got there I discovered that we'd been trapped in a Time Trap."

"A what?"

"A Time Trap. It's like those catch and release rat traps you humans have started using."

"We've been caught in a rat trap?"

He wrung his hands trying very hard not to look excited. "Exactly. There's someone out there that doesn't want time travelers getting too close to their planet. So it catches them and spits them out millions of light years away. Except, well, the spitty-out mechanism of the trap seems to be broken."

"So, are you saying we're stuck?"

"Um, yes."

I rolled my eyes. "You couldn't just take me home?"

"Not yet, I just wanted to..." But he didn't finish what he was going to say. Instead he turned back and fiddled with some of the controls. Over his shoulder he said, "I'll have to go onto the planet to disable the trap and free the TARDIS."

He was eager to go. Thrilled at the thought of adventures. I knew that he had some misplaced feelings of chivalry that were driving him to protect and coddle me, but doing so was killing him. He lived for the high of adventure.

"You have to go," I said. "It's the only way." I watched him carefully.

His attempt to smother a look of joy was pathetic really.

"But I have to go with you."

His face fell. "No, no," he said, shaking his head and waving his hands at me. "Stay here, you'll be much safer."

"Here? Doctor, I almost _died_ on the TARDIS. In fact, I did die. I was a-" I held my arms out and mimicked a zombie. "I'd be much safer with you."

I could tell that he didn't know what to do, and then he nodded and dashed out of the control room shouting that he'd be right back.

He was, with two gray and white suits, a knapsack and face masks.

"We're going to have to jump down to the surface. We'll tandem jump," he said, tossing me the smaller suit before pulling his on over his clothes.

It was a bit of a trick stuffing the skirt of my dress into my suit (it all ended up wadded around my waist) but in a thrice we were suited up. He helped me buckle my satchel onto the suit and then clipped us together snugly-my back to his belly. He wore the knapsack which contained a parachute and handed me a face mask.

We waddled to the doors like a mutant albino penguin and he pushed them open.

Below us, filling up almost the entire field of vision, was a stunning planet. Azure ocean, green and orange land with swirls of pure white clouds scattered across it all. It looked much like earth, although the shape of the continents was wholly unfamiliar.

"How will we find and disable the trap?" I asked, my voice muffled by the mask.

"It's locked the TARDIS in place directly above it. We just fall straight down."

I looked down. Below us I could see land and clouds but we were up so high that I couldn't make out any distinct landforms. We could be jumping into the middle of a forest or a prairie or a mountain for all I knew.

"Ready, Clara?" The Doctor asked.

I nodded.

"Geronimo!" shouted the Doctor.

We jumped.

_Notes:_ _I like to think that Rory spent a Saturday with his daughter in the sick bay labeling things._


	10. Chapter 10

Down we plunged.

All I could hear was my own heavy breathing as we fell, accelerating every second. Around us the sky was velvet black and pin pricked with stars, below us the planet was rushing upward, getting larger and larger. I could pick out a river and a forest and a vast orange plain.

I laughed, delighted.

I felt pressure building up against the the suit and then, without warning we flipped over.

For the briefest moment I was staring up at the TARDIS growing smaller and smaller and then we flipped again and I saw the green-orange planet and then we flipped once more and the TARDIS was just a speck. We flipped again and again. Head over heels, spinning and falling.

My head felt as if I'd been hanging upside down too long and my vision was grainy. I felt nauseated and paniced. My visor was fogging up reducing my sight even further. I felt the Doctor behind me, twisting and adjusting.

Then we were falling face first again.

I breathed as deeply as I could as we continued to fall.

We free fell for an eternity (4:15 seconds, the Doctor later told me). The lower we dropped, the more the fog in my visor cleared. I couldn't see black space around me anymore, just faint blue sky in all direction. In the distance, where the planet curved away at the horizon I could see clouds, but where we were going it was a cloudless day.

In addition to the river, plain and forest I had seen earlier I spotted a city below us laid out in a circular pattern. The streets reminded me of bubbles all joined together.

"One, two three," the Doctor counted off and then we were jerked back and up.

I tilted my head back (banging my helmet into his chin in the process) and saw a white and blue parachute flung open above us. The Doctor was holding onto the parachute, directing our glide. I looked back down at the planet below and relaxed. I hadn't realized how tense I had been until that moment.

From that point on the rest of the way down was magnificent.

"We broke the sound barrier," the Doctor's voice said in the helmet speaker by my ear.

"What? You're kidding," I said. I couldn't believe that I'd missed something like that. We'd broken it, I later learned, shortly after the Doctor had pulled us out of our spin—when my visor had been a haze of fog and I'd been ready to pass out.

"Better avoid the the city," he said and we swooped across the sky away from the city.

I twisted my head to get one last glimpse of it. It looked like a sandcastle city. It's buildings clustered together like upturned buckets of sand. A perfect forest of cylinders.

The forest and river were beneath us now, but the Doctor avoided those too, aiming instead at the orange plain. The closer we drew the better I could see what it was. It looked like a savannah of orange grass.

I saw the sonic screwdriver out of the corner of my eye and then the Doctor said, "77% Nitrogen, 21% Oxygen and 2% miscellaneous."

"Miscellaneous?" I asked.

He then rattled off a list of gasses and when he paused for a breath I asked if we could breath on the surface. I felt him nod behind me.

"Me better than you, actually," he said.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

I saw a flock of white and scarlet birds rise up from the ground far below us.

"It's almost the exact same atmospheric composition as Gallifrey."

"Oh," was all I said. I remembered that Gallifrey was his planet. The one that he'd come from that he didn't ever want to talk about. The planet he refused to take me to.

"Is this Gallifrey?" I asked.

"No," he said. "Gallifrey is gone."

Then he didn't stay another word until we were a few hundred feet above the ground when he asked me to lift my legs.

We landed surprisingly well for an uncoordinated alien and a human girl with zero sky diving experience. And when I say "landed well" I mean we ended up in a heap but no one broke a bone, so that was a bonus.

Once we'd disentangled ourselves and fought our way free of the parachute, we took our helmets off. The Doctor breathed deeply but I took only a few shallow breaths until I felt certain the atmosphere wasn't going to kill me. It was silly really, I'd not once worried that the air on other planets was deadly before. I guess I just assumed that if the Doctor could breath the air, so could I. I never considered that his home world might have different air than Earth's.

"Well?" he said, gesturing at the sky and looking at me expectantly.

"That was amazing," I said. I grinned and looked up, shielding my eyes from the glare of the planet's sun. I couldn't see the TARDIS even though I knew it was somewhere above us.

"It was, wasn't it?" He said, his smile wide and his eyes sparkling. Then he turned and looked back towards the forest. The city lay within the forest though we could not see if from where we stood. "Ready, Clara?" he asked.

"I was born ready," I said.

He snorted at that remark.

We took off our suits (my dress was wrinkled beyond hope) and I slipped my satchel over my shoulder. It had survived the fall with minimal damage. The strap looked a bit singed, but everything inside was intact. I reached in a rubbed the little lamp for good luck before we set off through the grass towards the forest.

The Doctor was delighted with everything he saw and his enthusiasm was contagious. The orange grass was about waist high and the blades were broad and soft. Red and yellow flowers bobbed above and amongst the grass and fat bee-like insect buzzed around them. The air had a wonderfully warm spicy smell, the smell of the grass and the flowers. Strange birds sang and I saw more of the scarlet and white birds flying over head.

Twice we saw something fuzzy and dusky yellow scamper away from us through the grass and the Doctor decided to call them "Flubbles" and he wanted to catch one and sulked when I told him he couldn't.

By the time we reached the edge of the forest I was starving. Tea with Captain Latimer seemed like a life time away. When I mentioned as much to the Doctor he reached into his pocket and withdrew a sandwich wrapped in paper.

"Jenny packed us a hamper," he explained.

"Where's the hamper?" I asked.

He patted his pocket and winked. "Bigger on the inside."

I ate the sandwich (egg salad) as we tramped into the trees.

The trees reminded me of mushrooms. The trunks were long and straight and the branches all clustered together near the top of the tree. The leaves were green and silver. I found one on the ground and stopped to pick it up and examine it. The top of the leaf was a dark emerald green while the bottom was a glistening silver.

The Doctor picked up a leaf of his own and scanned it with he screwdriver and frowned before dropping the leaf and letting it float to the ground.

He took my hand and we walked hand in hand amongst the tree branches.

Soon we were deep enough into the forest that we couldn't see the prairie behind us and the branches and foliage above blocked out a great deal of the sunlight.

I reached into my satchel and took out River's lamp. It glowed in the palm of my hand and illuminated the forest floor around us.

"Where did you get that?" The Doctor asked snatching the orb out of my hand. He held it up at eye level and pointed his screwdriver at it.

"Oi, grabby much?" I said. "Your dead wife gave it to me."

He nearly dropped the sphere. "River?"

"You know, I don't think she's as dead as you seem to believe," I said.

He didn't say anything but handed the lamp back to me. I held it out in front of us as we walked.

After several moments of silence, the Doctor began to speak. "A long time ago, a group of Gallifreyans, not Time Lords, mind, this was before the Time Lords, anyway, a group of Gallifreyans colonized planets in another star system."

"Do you think they colonized this planet?"

He nodded, tightening his grip on my hand. "I'd, I'd forgotten all about it. It was just a footnote in history, but the city and the planets and the trees..."

"What about the city?"

"The streets spelled out words in primitive Gallifreyan."

"What words?"

"Peace, prosperity, unity," he said.

"That sounds quite pretty," I said. Then I remembered something he had just said. "Hold on a tick, what do you mean _before _Time Lords? How can something be before Time Lords?"

"Time Lords were created," he said. "We all started out the same on Gallifrey. No regenerations, a long life though, no time travel. Loads of history happened and time passed. We explored the stars." He swept his arm at the forest around us. "An expedition must have come here and settled. Then there was a war-"

"The Time War?" I asked.

He shook his head. "No that came long after. This was the war against the vampires."

"Vampires!" I laughed.

The Doctor smiled despite himself and then continued, "Gallifreyans from across the galaxy were recalled to our home planet to join the fight. I suppose these people must have ignored the summons."

"Maybe they haven't happened yet?" I said.

"No." He looked haunted. "It happened already."

"So, what happened?" I asked. "With the vampires, I mean."

"We invented time travel to stop them."

"Time travel was invented as a weapon?"

"No! Well...yes, technically." He rubbed his neck uncomfortably.

"No wonder you lot ended up in a 'Time War'," I said, coming to a stop and dropping his hand so I could cross my arms over my chest. "So all of the people here, in the city, they're descendants of the Gallifreyans who had the sense to realize that using time as a weapon was a rubbish idea?"

The Doctor looked put out and he muttered something like, "They shirked their duty."

"Oh?" I asked. "And what's you running away in your box if it's not shirking your duty?"

His eyes flashed and in the light of the lamp I could see anger in his features. He stepped close to me and in a low voice, through clenched teeth he said, "I did not abandon my responsibilities. I came when they called. I did as they bid—even if it meant losing everything and everyone I'd ever loved." For a split second I saw that other him—the war torn one from the timestream—superimposed over his face.

I felt light headed.

I must have looked as if I were going to faint because the Doctor cried out my name and grabbed my shoulders.

The lamp dropped from my hand and bounced across the forest floor.

"Clara," the Doctor said again. He sat me down on a fallen log and scanned me with his sonic. Reality returned with a rush and I pushed the buzzing screwdriver away. I told him that I was fine, just hungry.

He gave me another sandwich from his pocket and retrieved the lamp for me. He sat down next to me and turned the lamp over and over in his hands while I ate.

_Notes:_ _I based Clara and the Doctor's jump on Felix Baumgartner's incredible free fall last year. I did take some liberties with what they were wearing as far as protective gear (since the Doctor probably has something from the 63rd century stashed on the TARDIS). If you haven't already, I highly encourage you to check out the videos from Baumgartner's fall-they're incredible!_ _The story the Doctor tells about the war against the vampires is based on the research I did on the history of the Time Lords in the Doctor Who wiki. It's pretty interesting stuff!_


	11. Chapter 11

I lost track of how long we hiked through the forest. The sandwiches had given me a boost of energy but soon I felt myself flagging again. I glanced at my watch (still set to my 21st century time) and estimated that I'd been up for almost twenty hours. The Doctor must have noticed that I was tired because he slowed his pace and started to ask me questions. He asked me to tell him about school, about my family, about Artie and Angie and my friends. He kept the questions light and I knew he was trying to distract me from my exhaustion.

At long last we stepped through a clearing in the forest and came across a cylindrical two story house. Instead of windows with glass frames it was ringed with two rows of slits which let in both light and air. It was painted a dusky green which matched the forest well. Around the house were circular gardens filled with vegetables and flowers and set behind it a barn. The roof of both the house and the barn were quite flat and it put me once again in mind of children's bucket-sandcastles at the sea side.

"Hello!" called the Doctor, marching towards the house and waving.

A woman appeared in the doorway. She was tall with a long face and quite a lot of finger hair. She said something to the Doctor in a language I couldn't understand and he seemed quite surprised.

He responded in an equally unfamiliar tongue and it was her turn to look surprised.

A man appeared behind her along with a little head peaking between her legs.

The woman asked the Doctor something and when he answered she turned to the man. He shrugged and then she gestured for us to come inside.

"Doctor, why isn't the TARDIS translating?" I whispered. "Is it because it's too far away?"

"You didn't understand that?"

"Or has it decided it hates me again?"

Instead of answering, the Doctor took my hand and tugged me towards the house where the family was waiting. "They're going to let us spend the night. Come along, Clara, don't be rude."

Inside the house was surprisingly bright. Light fixtures made out of a sort of glowing wire were twisted in spiral patterns and affixed to the interior walls. A spiral staircase twisted through the center of the ground floor, a perfect helix leading to the rooms above. The rooms, such as they were, extended outward from the staircase like the arms of a spiral galaxy. Around the outer edge of the room was a circular passageway which looked out through the window slits at the farmyard beyond.

The woman spoke to the Doctor and he indicated that we should sit on the bench in what appeared to be the kitchen.

"What did she say?" I asked.

"She is going to give us food and drink to formally designate us as their guests."

No one else said a word until after the Doctor and I had eaten the little flat cakes and drunk the water they gave us. Then the man pulled a chair up and started a conversation with the Doctor.

I handed my cup and plate to the woman and thanked her. She gave me a perplexed look but nodded.

I sat back and tried to listen in on the Doctor's conversation, listening for any words I might recognize, but there were none. I did figure out that although he and the man could understand each other they must be speaking different dialects or two mutually comprehensible languages because it sounded as if there was a lot of false starts and more hand motions than even the Doctor normally used.

I let their words wash over me as I looked around the kitchen. The woman was chiming into the conversation now and then but much of her communication to the man was through meaningful looks. The way she quirked her eyebrows or twitched her lips.

The child, a girl, had gone out of the room and she returned with paper and and a pencil and sat at the table drawing. I considered trying to strike up a conversation with her, but I was too tired. I really hoped that the Doctor was asking where the beds were.

Leaning my head back against the wall I closed my eyes. Their words shifted from garble I couldn't understand to a hum. Unbidden, images and pictures flickered across my mind. Diving towards the ground out of the TARDIS. The Doctor's screwdriver. The parachute. A dazzling image of careening through the Time Vortex. Uncertainty. Worry and fear.

I opened my eyes and looked at the woman. She was worried and afraid, but her face was serene as she leaned over the child and looked at the girl's drawing. But I knew, and I didn't know how I knew, I knew that she had just told the man that she was frightened of us and worried about what was going to happen.

I looked at the Doctor to see if he had noticed, but he hadn't seemed to. He turned to me and smiled and said, "Brilom is going to show us our room."

The bed a mattress on the floor made up with white blankets and a thick warm green quilt. I kicked my shoes off and collapsed on to the bed. Thankful to at last be able to sleep. The Doctor perched at the end of the bed and rubbed his hand across his face.

"Why can't I understand them, Doctor?" I asked.

"They speak Gallifreyan," he said. "Or at least, their language is based on it. It's an off-shoot of Old High Gallifreyan."

"That's why the TARDIS doesn't translate for me?"

He nodded.

I sat up and took the satchel off of my shoulder and put it on the floor beside the bed before flopping back down. "The woman doesn't trust us," I said.

He shot me a glance out of the corner of her eye.

"How do you know?" the Doctor asked.

I yawned and shrugged. "She told him somehow. While you were all talking."

I felt a question niggling at the back of my mind. It wormed it's way into my consciousness. A clear shining inquiry of "How?"

"I dunno," I said, rolling onto my side and reaching for River's lamp inside the satchel. "I just thought it."

He didn't say anything for a moment, then he said, "They weren't shielding you because I told them you were human. That you were not a telepathic species."

"Telepathic?" I put the lamp on my pillow where I could see it. "I'm not."

"Don't let on that you can gather the gist of their conversations," the Doctor said. "It's terribly rude to eavesdrop like that."

I poked him with my toes and said, "I can't. It was probably just their body language."

I yawned again.

Glimmering as it burrowed into my mind came a chuckle and an expression of "Oh, really?"

"Stop that," I mumbled. "You're giving me a headache."

I wrapped my hand around the lamp, like a child with a security blanket and fell asleep.


	12. Chapter 12

I dreamed about an orange planet with golden grass and silver trees. The cities on the surface were protected by glass domes. They looked like Christmas baubles as they glinted in the sunlight. I dreamed about attending classes at an academy and befriending a girl name Arkyitor-Rose.

In my dream we were playing together in the Citadel. She called my name and it was Clara—but it was also more. My name rang with meaning and significance. Images of clarity, fame, and brilliance blossomed in my mind's eye with each utterance of my name. She chased me and I chased her, laughing all the while.

I followed her down a corridor that overlooked a beautiful indoor garden with glimpses of the warm golden orange beauty of the planet beyond. The farther we walked, the more I fell behind. In an instant darkness shrouded her.

I heard drums.

I called out her name and surged after her as fast as I could. The corridor stretched out in front of me, twisting and turning.

I ran and ran and ran. Then I was running past rows of books, shelves upon shelves of books and I knew that I could not stop or the shadows would catch up with me.

Pounding, more pounding, close at my heels.

I was no longer Clara (a name that resounded with layers of significance), I was Oswin. A name I had once bestowed on myself.

Faster I had to run faster.

It was imperative that I reach my destination.

The faster I ran, the slower I moved. Whispers and shadows swirled around me. I caught glimpses of terrible twisted faces.

Throbbing waves threatened to engulf me, I screamed in despair. I couldn't move forward and behind me the darkness was closing in.

It was a dream, I told myself. Just a dream. But I couldn't wake up.

I stumbled and found myself falling. I was plummeting to the ground, icy wind tearing at my face and hair. This time, I knew, there would be no parachute to capture me.

"Grandfather and I are leaving," Rose told me. Later she'd choose a different name for herself and her Grandfather would travel with another Rose, but then, to me, she was Rose. Her name was innocence, beauty and a stubborn streak, a thorn, beneath it all.

"Why?" I asked as I fell. Pain oscillated in my head.

"He can't stand to be here without Grandmother. It's destroying him that she's gone. He shouldn't ever be alone, Clara."

But I was alone. I was in a cell, trapped in a metal body with a whisk and a plunger for my hands. All that I ever was or had been was gone. Destroyed.

"No, no, no," I cried. My voice was harsh and grating to my ears. It wasn't my voice. It was the voice of evil.

Someone was taking me away. I heard my mother shrieking in despair.

I wailed.

They forgot, they forgot and then I was gone.

"Clara? Clara you have to wake up," the Doctor said.

I wrenched myself awake and sat up, gasping for breath. My dress clung to my clammy skin and I trembled. The Doctor was kneeling on the floor next to the bed, holding one of my hands in his. The lamp had rolled off of the bed and was on the floor. He picked it up and handed it to me. I squeezed it and took a deep breath.

My head felt fit to burst. Tears I could not stop tumbled down my cheeks.

I looked up and saw the man and the woman in the doorway. The woman had concern written across her features.

She said something to the Doctor and he nodded and rocked back on his heels. She approached the bed and sat down beside me. She took my hand and said something to me. The words meant nothing, but I felt calmer.

"Clara, what happened?" the Doctor asked.

"Nothing," I said, remembering my earlier fears that the Doctor would do something drastic, probably involving that foul memory worm if I told him what was happening to me. Besides, I didn't know what exactly _was_ happening to begin with.

"Clara," he said again.

"I was just over tired," I said as I squeezed the lamp tighter and a sob escaped my clenched teeth.

The woman said something to the Doctor and they conversed for a few moments, then the man stepped into the light of the lamp. He was holding a tablet and a glass of water.

The Doctor picked up the tablet and scanned it with his screwdriver. I winced at the buzzing noise the tool emitted.

"Take this, Clara. It will help," he said handing it to me.

I let go of the woman's hand to take it. "What is it?"

"You must have gained some mild telepathic abilities when you entered my time stream. This is a medicine normally given to children when their fledgling abilities overwhelm them. It will help, I promise."

Put the tablet in my mouth and swallowed before accepting the glass of water and drinking that as well. I shifted so that I was laying back down. The other three occupants in the room looked down at me in concern. It was rather unnerving.

I blinked, my eyelids heavy.

The light in my hand grew dimmer as I drifted off to sleep.

_Notes:_ _I hope that I've achieved the right balance with Clara's dream. I wanted it to seem like a dream/nightmare without being too difficult to read or follow._ _Arkyitor/Rose is Susan's real name if Gallifreyan. I thought it was fitting that the version of Clara who lived on Gallifrey was one of Susan's friends._


	13. Chapter 13

I dreamed.

I was in a palace made from a million million forests. In the center of the palace, at its core, was a throne. And on that throne, resplendent in white, sat River Song. Her tumbled curls a golden crown on her head.

She was crying.

I approached the throne with no small amount of trepidation.

"Time is being rewritten," she said. "I can feel it. It's coming untangled and being re-knotted. It's different, not the way it was before."

Around us I felt the very air crackling.

"Who are you?" she asked.

"I'm Oswin Oswald," I said.

"No," she said. "You're Clara."

I did not know who Clara was, so I did not speak.

"Oh, Sweetie, you're Clara." River wept in earnest.

I opened my eyes.

It was morning. Sunlight streamed through the window slits and the Doctor sat against the wall, long legs stretched out before him. His face brightened when he saw me.

"You're awake! How are you feeling?"

I yawned and stretched and said, "Much better, thank you."

"Excellent." He clapped his hands together and rubbed them before jumping to his feet. "Right, let's get some breakfast and then we can go disable the Time Trap and take you home."

I sat up and tried to comb my fingers through my hair. I did feel remarkably better. My headache was gone and my dreams and nightmare were fading in the sunny light of morning.

We ate with the family, the Doctor thanked them in Gallifreyan and I thanked them in English and then. we set off through the woods towards the city again. This time we followed a road and I had an ample lunch stuffed into my satchel.

By mid morning the road led out of the forest to a high ridge. Below us spread the city, the cylinder shaped buildings were much like the house we'd stayed in the night before but built on a much larger scale. From our vantage point it was clear that some of the buildings were fifteen or twenty stories tall. I knew from when I'd seen it in the air that the city was laid out in circular patterns, but that was difficult to make out now that we were closer.

"Is this what the cities on Gallifrey looked like?" I asked, but before he could answer, I _knew_ the answer. I knew that the buildings on Gallifrey rose up from the orange-silver surface as smooth glistening spires protected by a crystal bubble which glistened in the light of Gallifrey's sun.

"No," the Doctor said.

"I think," I began, then paused. I wasn't supposed to tell. I was supposed to pretend that nothing was wrong. I thought about my dreams from the night before and crossed my arms and frowned.

"What?" the Doctor asked.

"I think I'm hungry," I said and reached into my satchel for some food, hoping to deflect his questioning gaze.

We ate while we walked. The road ran along the edge of the ridge before doubling back along itself and hugging the steep side of the ridge as it descended.

I tried to remember my dreams from the night before. They were more than dreams, I knew, they were memories of all of the thousands of other lives. The clearest thing I remembered from my first dream was the little girl I had played with, Rose. Her name had also been Arkytior. The moment I thought her name its meaning spread across my mind, warm and familiar. It seeped into my brain and pooled between my synapses.

"Doctor," I said, drawing to a stop. "Who is Arkytior?" The name slipped across my tongue, tasting like honey and the scent of roses.

He whirled around, eyes wide. He had been several paces ahead of me, but at my question he marched towards me, arms outstretched. "How do you know that name? How can you know that name?"

"She was," I paused, remembering my dream. I remembered the flash of brown hair and the bright, eyes. My classmate and playmate. My very best friend who one day disappeared. "I knew her once."

The Doctor grabbed my shoulders, his face pressed close to mine. His breath tickled my cheeks. "How, how did you know her? How can you know that name?"

I tried to take a step back, to duck my head away from his intense scrutiny, but he held me fast. His fingers dug into my shoulders so hard I felt certain that he would leave marks.

"Stop it, Doctor, you're hurting me," I said.

He dropped his hands so quickly I stumbled.

"Say it again," he said.

"Say what?" I asked.

"The name."

I did take a step back then and held up my hands so that if he clutched at me again I could ward him off. "Arkytior," I whispered. The name was still as sweet on my tongue and the images of my friend as strong in my mind as before.

He did not reach for me. He rubbed his chin and walked around me, looking at me from all sides. I felt naked and exposed. I wrapped my hands around the shoulder strap of my satchel and turned in place so that I faced him even as he circled me.

Then he spoke and though his words were Gallifreyan, their meaning buzzed through my mind and quivered down my spine. "You are Clara."

Clara. My name and not my name. The name from my dream which painted pictures in my mind when he spoke it. The name of Arkytior's best friend.

He put his hand on top of mine where they gripped the shoulder strap of my shoulder bag and I remembered my friend's grandfather. He had a slight build and long white hair. He always stopped to play with us and we could get up to such great mischief and he always let us get away with it. He was so kind and I had always wanted to have a grandfather like him. But I didn't have a grandfather, of course. I was Loomed, like most children were then. Arkytior hadn't been. She'd been _born. _One of the last.

I remembered Arkytior's grandmother as well. Regal and beautiful. She did not walk, she glided, her red and golden robes of state sweeping the floor. She was intelligent and influential and strict. She never let Arkytior and I get away with anything. Somehow she always found out about the trouble we'd been up to. But for all of her strictness, she was kind and loving. She came to my rescue when I got sick at the Academy when I was only six. She took me home and cared for me. She was against Looming. She said it robbed children of love and security. When I spent the night with Arkytior it was always her grandmother who read us stories.

I also remember the day she died.

Daleks had poured out the sky, cascading around the citadel like beetles. All of the children had been hidden in the tunnels far beneath the city. We heard the fighting above. The crashes and explosions. The grating shouts of "EX-TER-MIN-ATE!" Even the memory of that day caused my heart to pound and my hands to sweat.

The defenses to the tunnels fell and the Daleks mounted a full assault of our hiding place. The oldest children, the ones who were almost adults, formed a protective ring around the younger children. Arkytior and I were not quite little children then, but also not grown up enough either. How old was I? Ten? Perhaps. Together we gathered together a huddle of the little babies and toddlers and comforted them as best as we could.

When the Daleks crashed into our hiding place, we were singing to the babies while we cried with fear. Smoke and fire and ash filled the room. Bodies collapsed around us. Children screamed. It was so dark, so very dark.

I sat down heavily in the middle of the road. Crushed by the weight of the vivid memories. The Doctor wrapped an arm around my shoulders and held my hand.

The attack on the children lasted less than two minutes before the Daleks were overwhelmed by a wave of Timelords. The adults poured in from two directions. One flank lead by a man I knew only by sight, the Master. The other by Arkytior's grandmother.

In the last chaotic seconds, a Dalek had swept a path through the older children and stopped in front of us. Arkytior and I scrambled to put ourselves between it and the babies. They shrieked in terror. Their advanced, precocious intelligence allowing them to understand all too keenly that they were going to die. I remembered the Dalek's cruel blue eyestalk focusing on us and it's gunstick raising.

By that point I was gasping for breath, consumed by my memory. I was senseless to the road I sat on, or the city it led to.

The memory of a swirl of a red gown, the glint of silver hair and a shout pierced my mind. Arkytior's grandmother dove between us and the Dalek. She rammed her slender sonic into the gunstick the moment it fired. Both she and the Dalek flashed and crackled in blue-white light.

That was how she'd died. The woman who had been like a grandmother to me.

After that Arkytior and her grandfather had withdrawn from Gallifreyan society. They'd become more and more distant with each passing year. Until one day, when I had been a junior TARDIS technician, they'd slipped away for good.

I opened my eyes and realized that I my cheeks were wet from tears. I blinked and stared down the road. Flecks in the asphalt caught the sun and twinkled in the light. The tall grass along the side of the road waved in the breeze, blue and gold flowers nodding their heads. Beyond the grass the first houses and buildings of the city rose up. In the distance I could see the shapes of people moving and the faster blurs of transportation similar to cars and lorries.

I dragged my eyes away from the city and looked at the Doctor. His hair had flopped into his eyes, and he was all chin and had no eyebrows. But I recognized him, he was Arkytior's grandfather. He was the same man who had let us have an extra sweet with a wink when her grandmother said no. His face was different but his essence was the same. I knew then that no matter what face he had, I would always be able to recognize the Doctor.

"Hello," I said.

The worried expression on his face melted and he smiled. "Hello, Clara." He said hello in English, but my name in Gallifreyan.

I returned his smile.

Instead of a headache, I felt lightheaded and a little giddy. I stood on shaky legs and the Doctor tucked my arm into the crook of his elbow.

"What happened to Rose?" I asked of my friend in English, I looked up at the Doctor as we walked.

He looked off into the distance and though his smile faded, he did not frown. "She fell in love and stayed on Earth. She had children and when they were grown she took them to Gallifrey." He did not elaborate.

She was still there, I knew. With her children. Locked in the Time War. I was still there too. That other me. Though try as I might, I could not remember anything about the war. Those memories must be locked along with the war.

The Doctor jerked to the side and dragged me off to the road and into the tall grass. As we crouched I looked down the road to see a group of men in uniform marching up the road towards us. Soldiers by the look of them.

"How do you feel Clara?" he whispered.

I shrugged, still feeling a little dizzy and giddy.

He brushed a hand across my forehead and the lightheaded feeling dissipated like fog under a hot sun.

"When I say so, run," he said.

Notes: Sorry for the delay. I've been looking for a job this summer and that's eaten up a lot of my time! I'm looking for a beta reader for this story, if anyone is interested. Ideally I'd like my beta to go through the chapters I've already posted and help me catch typos and to tighten up my prose. If you're interested send me an email at allisonluckychance gmail . com


	14. Chapter 14

Running did us no good whatsoever. We'd hardly taken two steps before something hot and sizzling struck us in the back and we fell. The last thing I remembered was feeling as if I'd gotten the largest static electric shock of my life and then blackness.

I woke up with a headache (what was new) in a dim circular room. The Doctor was scratching on the wall with what turned out to be one of my hair pins. I sat up and massaged my scalp. The room was empty except for us and the floor was grimy. With a scowl I tried to brush the grit from my hair and clothes.

"Would it have killed them to hoover a bit before dumping us in here?" I muttered.

The Doctor chuckled. "Perhaps the dirty floor adds to the atmosphere." He continued to scratch at the wall, fine dust falling to the floor as he did so.

"Well, you're certainly not helping to keep it clean," I said.

He shrugged and continued to scratch. The light was too poor for me to make out what he was doing and my head was pounding so ferociously that I didn't really fancy getting up to investigate. Instead I leaned back against the wall and shut my eyes.

"Did they take my bag?" I asked.

"Yep," said the Doctor cheerfully.

"They've got River's lamp then," I said.

"Yep," he said, though his voice had lost it's careless cheer.

"Suppose it probably would have been useful."

"Invaluable," he said.

"What are you doing, anyway?" I asked. The scratching noise slicing through my brain leaving jagged shards of pain behind.

"Oh, you know," he said. "Just a Honey-Do list."

I opened my eyes then and looked at him.

He was brushing the excess dust out of his etching. I recognized it as space-time coordinates. Like the ones I'd seen during the dream conference—only cruder and carved into a wall with a hair pin.

"I thought there was a Time Trap on this planet?"

"Never underestimate an archeologist," the Doctor said.

Confused I said nothing but closed my eyes again. My head throbbed in time to my heart.

I hadn't gotten a headache earlier when I'd remembered about Gallifrey. It must have been the strange medicine for telepathic children that had held it at bay. Now though, it was time to pay the piper. The pain was centered behind my skull above my right eye and from there it radiated outward like a spider web made of ice.

Compared to the others, this headache raged like a wild storm. Lights flashed across my vision and I felt the pain coiling around my neck. I took slow breaths through my nose, forcing myself to think about the feel of the cool wall against my back or the dirty floor beneath my hands. Anything but the pain.

"Did you try the door yet?" I asked.

"They've got my sonic. Also, it's not a door. It's a giant rock."

I cracked and eye open and looked at the door. It was a tall round stone which had been rolled in front of the doorway in a deep groove cut into the floor parallel to the doorway. The only way to open it would be for someone on the outside to push and roll the stone away from the door.

"The windows?" I asked.

"Too narrow."

I groaned in frustration and drew my knees up to my chest and rested my forehead against them. I could hear the blood in my ears and every chip and scratch of the Doctor working at wall raked against my pulsating head.

I must have fallen asleep because I startled when the Doctor crouched beside me. He touched my shoulder.

"Headache, Clara?" he asked.

I nodded.

I felt his fingers, two on each temple and then golden relief trickled through me. I sighed and opened my eyes as the pain receded.

"After we're out I'll have to fix it. Permanently," he said. The look or stricken resignation on is face frightened me.

I pushed his hands away and scrambled to my feet. "I'm better now," I said. "No more headache." Which wasn't strictly true. I could still feel it, lurking in the depths of my mind. I chose to ignore it, and walked over to the wall the Doctor had been working on and ran my fingers over the circular marks he'd made.

Space-time coordinates. It was funny, the made sense to me now. I read them and got an image of a place and a time. It must have been how River knew the coordinates she saw were for Trenzalore with only a glance.

"Aren't the people on this planet from Gallifrey?" I asked.

"Yes," said the Doctor. He slid down the wall into a seated position and folded his hands in his lap.

"And you can talk to them in Gallifreyan and they understand you?" I looked down at him, wondering why he hadn't realized the flaw in his plan yet.

"Yes?"

"You're an idiot." I pointed at his coordinates. "They'll just come in here and break down the wall. No archeologist can discover this if it's been destroyed."

His face fell and he muttered something under his breath that I couldn't quite make out.

"I bet they don't know English," I said. I walked over to another blank stretch of wall and pulled out another hair pin, glad I'd had the foresight the day before to pin my stray hair back (was it really only the day after we left the Paternoster Gang in Victorian London?).

"What's the date?" I asked.

The Doctor listed off numbers. I recognized the numbering system used on Gallifrey for dates. The walls were made of a stone similar to sandstone (which accounted for the gritty floor) and it was easy enough to etch the numbers deeply into the stone. Fine dust covered my hands and the front of my clothes as I worked. I licked my lips, thirsty.

I used the time off of my watch which was still set to BST so I wrote the date according to Earth time thinking that more information might help the archeologist—whoever it was—find us.

"What are you doing?" the Doctor asked as I crouched and started to add a line of text.

"We're here because there's a Time Trap. Whoever comes after us will need to know about the Trap too."

"Yes, well, that explanation is in my note," he said, pointing above his head and to the right.

"And now it's in mine," I said. I was thirsty and it was getting harder to ignore my headache. For good measure I added 'PS: Bring Water' at the end of my message and then signed it: 'Clara xx'

"Signed with a kiss?" the Doctor said.

"Yep," I said. I sat down below my message and inspected the hair pin. It was well bent and covered in dust. I'd never be able to use it again. I flicked it across the cell towards the Doctor "Why are we in here anyway?"

"We got through their Time Trap. They don't like time travelers. They especially don't like Timelords."

"The people at the farm, they turned us in, didn't they?" I asked.

"Seems so," said the Doctor without any real malice.

"So when is this archeologist supposed to show up and rescue us?" I asked.

A resounding crack shattered the silence outside of our cell and a high pitched scream followed.

"Right about now," said the Doctor, his face brightening. He got to his feet and began to pace by the door, fluttering his hands and grinning.

"That was a gun, wasn't it?" I asked.

"Probably," said the Doctor looking positively gleeful for someone who claimed to abhor weapons.

I stood up as well and dusted off the front of my dress. I got as close to the door and listened to the commotion outside. As best I could hear, there was an awful lot of shouting, stamping boots, and thuds. No more gun shots though.

Then the noise stopped and the stone shifted. With a most terrible scrapping and grinding sound, the stone rolled ponderously in its groove. As soon as the smallest gap appeared between the stone and the door frame, the Doctor and I dug our fingers into it and threw our strength behind the stone as well.

It was impossibly heavy, and my nails broke and fingers bled as we pushed. The gap widened and I could see hands on the outside pushing as well. Female hands.

"Your archeologist friend," I grunted, "She isn't River Song by any chance?"

"Hello, Sweetie," she said.

"She turns up like a bad penny for someone who's supposed to be dead," I grumbled.

"Clara!" the Doctor cried. "Spoilers!"

"Never you mind, dear," said River. By now the gap was wide enough that we could see her torso and face as she pushed the stone back. Her face was smudged with dirt and sweat and she blew a stray curl out of her face. "I escaped the Library ages ago."

"What!?" The Doctor said, so surprised he stopped pushing entirely and River and I had to thrust our weight against the stone to keep it from rolling back.

"A little help, Doctor?" I said, panting with exertion.

He resumed his place and when the gap was wide enough, he pushed me through and dashed out behind me. River pulled us both free as the door rolled back into place with a solid -thump-.

We had emerged into a low ceiling corridor with high narrow slits on the wall which served as windows. Two men lay unconscious on the floor by the wall and a third man lay further up the hall in a crumpled heap. I quickly turned away.

River handed me a canteen of water and then put a hand on the Doctor's shoulder. He was doubled over, hands on his knees, panting. More, I thought, from what River had said than from pushing the stone back.

"Doctor?" she asked in a low voice. Her hair was twisted back from her face in a bun, but curls which had escaped fell into her face as she leaned towards him. He put a hand on her thigh and squeezed. He took a deep breath, shook his head vigorously and popped upright, seemingly himself again.

"Right, escaping. That's what we need to be doing right now." He rubbed his hands together a gesture I had learned meant he was deflecting.

I unscrewed the top of the canteen and took several long gulps of water. It had a strap, so I looped it over my shoulder when I was finished with it, pleased that my impulsively added post script had been effective.

"We can't go back that way," said River, referring to the direction she had come where the man lay in the middle of the corridor. "According to my excavations, if we go the other way we'll come across the entrance to a tunnel. The tunnel will take us to the main government building. The Time Trap will probably be located somewhere near there."

The Doctor set off at once in the direction River had indicated.

"Probably?" I asked as River and I followed.

"My students hadn't excavated that section of the city yet. I have a fairly good idea of the layout of only about ten percent of the city."

"Thank goodness this was part of the ten percent," I said.

River bumped her shoulder against mine. "Thanks for your message. It looks like the Doctor tired to leave something in Gallifreyan, but it was pretty well destroyed."

"Ha!" I said triumphantly. "Did you hear that, Doctor?"

He waved his hand dismissively.

"The tunnel should be to our right," said River.

I had been expecting a secret entrance, with a loose brick that had to be pushed in so far, or a switch hidden into the wall. The actual entrance was a low doorway labeled with a sign.

"Handy," said River.

The Doctor and I went through first and River followed. She pulled out a gun of some sort—it reminded me of the toy guns Artie and his friends like to play with, the ones that shot foam darts. A few quick shots which looked and sounded like science fiction blasters and the doorway we had come through collapsed into a pile of rubble.

"Quickly then," she said. "Once they see this they'll know where we've gone."

She had a torch clipped to her belt and she tossed it to the Doctor who flicked it on and led us at a run down the hallway.

"You're an archeologist?" I asked as we ran.

She nodded. "I teach it, actually. At Luna University. Or rather, I did. Tenure means nothing after you've been declared dead. Luckily no one seems to notice much if I hop back to some digs I missed the first go round. Good thing, too." She didn't miss a beat as she talked and jogged. I was not nearly so graceful and was already breathless.

Thankfully, the tunnel wasn't long and the Doctor clicked off the torch as we drew closer to the exit.

"How are you feeling, Clara?" he asked as we slowed.

"Fine," I lied. Running had brought the headache to the forefront again.

"Head?" River asked.

I nodded.

"I'll fix it when we're off the planet," the Doctor said.

River stepped around me and angled herself so that she was between me and the Doctor. "How do you propose we do that?" she asked.

"After we disable the Time Trap you can use your Vortex Manipulator," he nodded to the wide leather strap around her wrist, "To take us to the TARDIS."

"How are we going to destroy the Trap? I doubt asking nicely will be very effective."

"Hush, River, I'm coming up with a clever plan."

River looked over her shoulder at me and rolled her eyes.

We arrived at the exit of the tunnel. It fed into an empty well-lit corridor. Cautiously we stepped out. River took a box-like scanner out of her pocket and after a few moments gestured down the hall. "That way," she said.

**Notes:** Two updates in one day to make up for a month without. I'm very bad at writing action scenes and so I apologize for knocking our characters out and then having them stock on the other side of a very large rock later on.


End file.
